Culture, Art & Literature quotes for UPSC & State PCS

Language is the dress of thought.

Books are the mirrors of the soul.

It is through beauty that we arrive at freedom.

The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.

He who does not speak foreign languages knows nothing about his own.

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.

We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.

Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.

The great law of culture is: Let each become all that he was created capable of being.

There is an artist imprisoned in each one of us. Let him loose to spread joy everywhere.

The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.

The best books are those, which those who read them believe they themselves could have written.

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason.

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

The pen is the tongue of the soul; as are the thoughts engendered there, so will be the things written.

No writing has any real value which is not the expression of genuine thought and feeling. (20 December 1939)

Fiction is Truth's elder sister. Obviously. No one in the world knew what truth was till some one had told a story.

For cultural invasion to succeed, it is essential that those invaded become convinced of their intrinsic inferiority.

Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it.

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. (1982; quoted in the Introduction by Jeffrey M. Elliot)

Thirkukkural was written to show a good path to the people to create values in life and to develop a good order in the society.

Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen.

If more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place in which to live.

All men of genius, and all those who have gained rank in the republic of letters, are brothers, whatever may be the land of their nativity.

It is the duty of a writer to protect and argue in favour of those who are oppressed, sufferers, whether an individual or a group deprived.

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

The Value of myth is that it takes all the things you know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by the veil of familiarity.

The thing that politicians are seemingly unable to understand is that you cannot produce a vigorous literature by terrorising everyone into conformity.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and disdain — under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human core.

In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream.

Unlike the laws of physics... every man-made order is packed with internal contradictions. Cultures are constantly trying to reconcile these contradictions, and this... fuels change.

The 'greatness' of literature cannot be determined solely by literary standards; though we must remember that whether it is literature or not can be determined only by literary standards.

The arts in every field — music, drama, sculpture, painting — we can learn to appreciate and enjoy. We need not be artists, but we should be able to appreciate the work of artists. (5 November 1958)

I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered not for victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit.

The life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of a nation, is very close to the center of a nation's purpose...and is a test of the quality of a nation's civilization.

A lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity, that ever were written.

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.

... culture is useless unless it is constantly challenged by counter culture. People create culture; culture creates people. It is a two-way street. When people hide behind a culture, you know that's a dead culture.

Long ago I studied the ancient Indian languages, and while I was chiefly interested at that time in philosophy, I read a little poetry too; and I know that my own poetry shows the influence of Indian thought and sensibility.

There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them, or above each other—by language, which is the parent, and not the child, of thought.

The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily.

We are so proud of our guarantees of freedom in thought and speech and worship, that, unconsciously, we are guilty of one of the greatest errors that ignorance can make — we assume our standard of values is shared by all other humans in the world.

Art is Individualism, and Individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. Therein lies its immense value. For what it seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

India chose her places of pilgrimages on the top of hills and mountains, by the side of the holy rivers, in the heart of forests and by the shores of the ocean, which along with the sky, is our nearest visible symbol of the vast, the boundless, the infinite and the sublime.

Technique without inspiration, is barren. Intellectual powers, sense facts and imaginative fancies may result in clever verses, repetition of old themes, but they are only manufactured poetry. It is not simply a difference of quality but a difference of kind in the source itself.

Every country and every culture has traditions that are unique and help make that country what it is. But just because something is a part of your past doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t mean that it defines your future. [...] Just because something is a tradition doesn’t make it right.

The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the cosmos itself undergoes an immense and indeed an infinite number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond […] to those of modern scientific cosmology.

The arts alone give direct access to experience. To eliminate them from education - or worse, to tolerate them as cultural ornaments - is antieducational obscurantism. It is foisted on us by the pedants and snobs of Hellenistic Greece who considered artistic performance fit only for slaves...

Myths and fictions accustom... people... to think in certain ways, to believe in... certain standards, to want certain things, and to observe certain rules. ...[T]hereby ...artificial instincts ...enable millions of strangers to cooperate ...This network of artificial instinct is ...'Culture'.

In the days before machinery men and women who wanted to amuse themselves were compelled, in their humble way, to be artists. Now they sit still and permit professionals to entertain them by the aid of machinery. It is difficult to believe that general artistic culture can flourish in this atmosphere of passivity.

When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.

Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty. One person may even perceive deformity, where another is sensible of beauty; and every individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment, without pretending to regulate those of others.

I never imagined that any of my films, especially Pather Panchali, would be seen throughout this country or in other countries. The fact that they have is an indication that, if you're able to portray universal feelings, universal relations, emotions, and characters, you can cross certain barriers and reach out to others, even non-Bengalis.

One cannot grow fine flowers in a thin soil.

A creative economy is the fuel of magnificence.

Our India is the best of all countries in the world.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.

Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality.

Shun those studies in which the work that results dies with the worker.

People don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book.

It seems to me that the dedication of a library is in itself an act of faith.

What's in a name? That which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet.

Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.

The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom.

All men know the utility of useful things; but they do not know the utility of futility.

Nations are born in the hearts of poets; they prosper and die in the hands of politicians.

It takes centuries to make a little history; it takes centuries of history to make a tradition.

There are some things about your own village that you never know until you have been away from it.

Dostoevsky was made by being sent to Siberia. Writers are forged in injustice as a sword is forged.

The world is shrinking together; it is finding itself neighbor to itself in strange, almost magic degree.

A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers.

We stand guard over works of art, but species representing the work of aeons are stolen from under our noses.

Criticism will annihilate race-prejudices by insisting upon the unity of the human mind in the variety of its forms.

The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.

The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest.

Happy will be those who give ear to the words of the dead:—The reading of good works and the observing of their precepts.

Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.

If the use of leisure time is confined to looking at TV for a few extra hours every day, we will deteriorate as a people. (5 November 1958)

Globalization is not in itself a folly: It has enriched the world scientifically and culturally and benefited many people economically as well.

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

Hallowed landscapes lost their sacredness and were exploited as the local people became insensitive to the destruction, accepting it as a sign of progress.

While no tradition coincides with experience, every tradition is essentially unique and valuable. While all traditions are of value, none is finally binding.

Not chaos-like together crush'd and bruis'd, But as the world, harmoniously confus'd, Where order in variety we see, And where, though all things differ, all agree.

Only when an ideal of peace is born in the minds of the peoples will the institutions set up to maintain this peace effectively fulfill the function expected of them.

History is full of people who out of fear or ignorance or the lust for power have destroyed treasures of immeasurable value which truly belong to all of us. We must not let it happen again.

Consumerism and nationalism... make us imagine that millions of strangers belong to the same community.., that we... have a common past.., interest and... future. This isn't a lie. It's imagination.

A love of tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril; but the new view must come, the world must roll forward ... Let us have no fear of the future.

If America is a melting pot, then to me India is a thali -- a collection of sumptuous dishes in different bowls. Each may not mix with the next, but they combine on your palate to produce a satisfying repast.

Armed with the knowledge of our past, we can with confidence charter a course for our future. Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle. We must take hold of it and forge the future with the past.

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. It might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

It is clearly necessary to invent organizational structures appropriate to the present multicultural age. But such efforts are doomed to failure if they do not grow out of something deeper, out of generally held values.

The India I Love, does not make the headlines, but I find it wherever I go – in field or forest, town or village, mountain or desert – and in the hearts and minds of people who have given me love and affection for the better part of my lifetime.

History, like beauty, depends largely on the beholder, so when you read that, for example, David Livingstone discovered the Victoria Falls, you might be forgiven for thinking that there was nobody around the Falls until Livingstone arrived on the scene.

No one in England has ever wished to prevent the fullest expression of Scottish or Welsh traditions and customs. Indeed, their manifestation is regarded with pleasure and pride by the English people. We have reaped great advantages from this tolerant mood.

Without being known too well, it [India] has existed for millennia in the imagination of the Europeans as a wonderland. Its fame, which it has always had with regard to its treasures, both its natural ones, and in particular, its wisdom, has lured men there.

Our National life is full of diversities. We have here a variety of languages, of faiths, of communities, of modes of living, and schools and styles of literature and art. This diversity reflects the abundance of our national life, and need to be preserved and promoted.

Manners are of more importance than laws. The law can touch us here and there, now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation like that of the air we breathe in.

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.

I was born in what was once the metropolis of British India. My own ancestors came floating to Calcutta upon the earliest tide of the fluctuating fortune of the East India Company. The unconventional code of life for our family has been a confluence of three cultures, the Hindu, Mohammedan and British.

The weaving of mankind into one community does not imply the creation of a homogeneous community, but rather the reverse; the welcome and adequate utilization of distinctive quality in an atmosphere of understanding... Communities all to one pattern, like boxes of toy soldiers, are things of the past, rather than of the future.