The good qualities in our soul are most successfully and forcefully awakened by the power of art. Just as science is the intellect of the world, art is its soul.
Interpretation
Art has the ability to awaken and enhance the positive aspects of our inner selves.
Maxim Gorky's quote emphasizes the significant role of art in elevating our good qualities and enriching our souls. While science embodies the intellect and rationality of the world, art represents the emotional and soulful side of humanity, showcasing how creativity can tap into our inner depths and foster personal growth and understanding.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of arts education, this quote can illustrate the transformative power of creativity.
If it is true that only misfortune can awaken a man's soul, it is a bitter truth, one that is hard to hear and accept, and it is only natural that many people deny it and say it is better for a man to live on in a trance than to wake up to torture.
What I'd like is to meet a man I could take off my hat to and say: "Thank you for having got born, and the longer you live the better.
A good man can be stupid and still be good. But a bad man must have brains.
To speak the truth is the most difficult of all arts, for in its "pure" form, not connected with the interests of individuals, groups, classes, or nations, truth is almost completely unsuitable for use by the Philistine and is unacceptable to him.
Be good, be kind, be humane, and charitable; love your fellows; console the afflicted; pardon those who have done you wrong.
Truth doesn't always heal a wounded soul.
By making us stop for a moment, poetry gives us an opportunity to think about ourselves as human beings on this planet and what we mean to each other.
What is Music? How do you define it? Music is a calm moonlit night, the rustle of leaves in Summer. Music is the far off peal of bells at dusk! Music comes straight from the heart and talks only to the heart: it is Love! Music is the Sister of Poetry and her Mother is sorrow!
I write from this tight third-person viewpoint, where each chapter is seen through the eyes of one individual character. When I'm writing that character, I become that character and identify with that character.
I see a movie as a way of learning about the world, about myself, and learning about my relationship with people and art.
The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.
Here let dead poetry rise once more to life.
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