Unfortunately, moral beauty in art - like physical beauty in a person …

Susan Sontag
253 citations
Unfortunately, moral beauty in art - like physical beauty in a person - is extremely perishable. It is nowhere so durable as artistic or intellectual beauty. Moral beauty has a tendency to decay very rapidly into sententiousness or untimeliness.
Time
23

More Author Quotes

The ideology of capitalism makes us all into connoisseurs of liberty - of the indefinite expansion of possibility. ✨ Susan Sontag (2013). Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors, p.118, Pengui … ▶
Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what, formerly, we could not bear to see or hear, because it was too shocking, painful, or embarrass … ▶
While a painting, even one that meets photographic standards of resemblance, is never more than the stating of an interpretation, a photograph is never less than the registering of an emanation (ligh … ▶
Tamed as it may be, sexuality remains one of the demonic forces in human consciousness - pushing us at intervals close to taboo and dangerous desires, which range from the impulse to commit sudden ar … ▶
Art is not consciousness per se, but rather its antidote- evolved from within consciousness itself. ✨ Susan Sontag (2014). A Susan Sontag Reader, p.262, Macmillan

Unfortunately, moral beauty in art - like physical beauty in a person - is extremely perishable. It is nowhere so durable as artistic or intellectual beauty. Moral beauty has a tendency to decay very rapidly into sententiousness or untimeliness.

More Author Quotes

Most Cited Authors

The Best Quotes

Most Liked Authors

Curated Author Quotes