"Who would dare assign to art the sterile function of imitating nature?" ― Charles Baudelaire Topic(s): Art More From Charles Baudelaire "The unique and supreme voluptuousness of love lies in the certainty of committing evil. And men and women know from birth that in evil is found all sensual delight." "Our religion is itself profoundly sad – a religion of universal anguish, and one which, because of its very catholicity, grants full liberty to the individual and asks no better than to be celebrated in each man’s own language – so long as he knows anguish and is a painter." "An artist is an artist only because of his exquisite sense of beauty, a sense which shows him intoxicating pleasures, but which at the same time implies and contains an equally exquisite sense of all deformities and all disproportion." More In Art "Americans cannot maintain their essential faith in government if there are two Americas, in which the private sector’s work subsidizes the disproportionate benefits of this new public sector elite."― Mortimer Zuckerman "Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary."― Boris Pasternak "My dad had emphysema and both of my parents had chronic bronchitis and ended up with cancers – all smoking related."― Loni Anderson