I have treated many artists. There are among them many neurotics, so many that one finally comes to believe that one cannot be an artist without being neurotic. Again I found in them that inner conflict which is characteristic of modern man: the conflict between a right intuition (namely, that their vocation has fundamental importance for the destiny of humanity) and a false idea (namely, that art is superfluous luxury).Paul Tournier
About This Quote
In this quote from the novel "The Trial" by Franz Kafka, the author discusses how he views artists. He believes that artists must have a great amount of self-confidence and a great amount of self-discipline. He also believes that artists cannot be neurotics or at least should not be neurotic because being a neurotic would mean that the artist would have a level of self-doubt. Though it is not meant to imply that his view is correct, but rather that his view is one that many people would agree with as well as the idea that artists are typically very confident people.
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More Quotes By Paul Tournier
- Disgusted by the abuses to which it led, humanity repressed Christianity by which it had so long been dominated. Repressed, but not eliminated. Herein lies, I believe, the essence of the tragedy of modern times. The modern man lives as if Christianity were a negligible...
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- But in practice, every psychological confession has religious significance, and every religious confession, whether ritual and sacramental or free, its psychological effects. It is perhaps in this fact that we perceive most clearly the unity of the human being, and how impossible it is to...
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- A man makes himself hard and inflexible in order to escape his guiltiness. The strange paradox present on every page of the Gospels and which we can verify any day, is that it is not guilt which is the obstacle to grace, as moralism supposes....