Liam O'Flaherty quotes

It's impossible for a creative artist to be either a Puritan or a Fascist, because both are a negation of the creative urge. The only things a creative artist can be opposed to are ugliness and injustice.
-- Liam O'Flaherty

#Artist #Creative #Impossible

I was born on a storm-swept rock and hate the soft growth of sun-baked lands where there is no frost in men's bones.
-- Liam O'Flaherty

#Hate #Men #Rocks

Ours is the wild tumult of the unchained storm, the tumult of the army on the march, clashing its cymbals, rioting with excess of energy. Need we be ashamed of it?
-- Liam O'Flaherty

#Army #Storm #Energy

When the parish priest rebuked him for his celibacy, saying it would lead him into debaucheryand sin, hesaid that a man who had to be muzzled bya wife as a protection against debauchery was not worthy of the joy of innocence. After that people began to treat him with priestly respect.
-- Liam O'Flaherty

#Men #People #Wife

An artist’s job is to captivate… if we stumble into truth, we got lucky.

I think with anything where you delve into the back story of an artist, it kind of explains their work more intimately.

The artist as businessman is uglier than the businessman as artist.

Now almost every artist outside of New York is connected with some school or some museum school, and even in New York the majority are. That's an interesting fact when you take the idea of making money, making a living selling paintings. Only a dozen or two painters do that.

Nationality is the creative power of human culture, culture is the creative power of nationality.

A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.

Every creative act draws on the past whether it pretends to or not. It draws on what it knows. There's no such thing, really, as a creative act in a vacuum.

There just is exponentially more money in the movie business than in the music business. As a result there are more people involved in the creative process.

Idealism does not represent a superfluous expression of emotion, but in truth it has been, is, and will be, the premise for what we designate as human culture...Without his idealistic attitude all, even the most dazzling faculties of the intellect, would remain mere intellect just like outward appearance without inner value, and never creative force....The purest idealism is unconsciously equivalent to the deepest knowledge...

I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I cannot know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it.