Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art.

Meaning of the quote

The quote suggests that great works of art, like music, paintings, or sculptures, create new ideas and ways of doing things. They don't follow strict rules set by others. Instead, the best artists break the rules and create something unique and original. They use their creativity to make their own rules, which others then try to follow.

About Claude Debussy

Claude Debussy was a French composer who is considered one of the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is sometimes referred to as the first Impressionist composer, although he rejected the term. Debussy’s innovative compositions, including orchestral works like Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and the opera Pelléas et Mélisande, have had a lasting impact on classical music.

More about the author

More quotes from Claude Debussy

I love music passionately. And because I love it I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it.

Claude Debussy

French classical composer (1862-1918)

How much has to be explored and discarded before reaching the naked flesh of feeling.

Claude Debussy

French classical composer (1862-1918)

Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light.

Claude Debussy

French classical composer (1862-1918)

Art is the most beautiful of all lies.

Claude Debussy

French classical composer (1862-1918)

The attraction of the virtuoso for the public is very like that of the circus for the crowd. There is always the hope that something dangerous will happen.

Claude Debussy

French classical composer (1862-1918)

I wish to sing of my interior visions with the naive candour of a child.

Claude Debussy

French classical composer (1862-1918)

Music is the expression of the movement of the waters, the play of curves described by changing breezes.

Claude Debussy

French classical composer (1862-1918)

Extreme complication is contrary to art.

Claude Debussy

French classical composer (1862-1918)

First of all, ladies and gentlemen, you must forget that you are singers.

Claude Debussy

French classical composer (1862-1918)

Art is the most beautiful deception of all. And although people try to incorporate the everyday events of life in it, we must hope that it will remain a deception lest it become a utilitarian thing, sad as a factory.

Claude Debussy

French classical composer (1862-1918)

People come to music to seek oblivion: is that not also a form of deception?

Claude Debussy

French classical composer (1862-1918)

There is nothing is more musical than a sunset. He who feels what he sees will find no more beautiful example of development in all that book which, alas, musicians read but too little – the book of Nature.

Claude Debussy

French classical composer (1862-1918)

Some people wish above all to conform to the rules, I wish only to render what I can hear. There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law.

Claude Debussy

French classical composer (1862-1918)

Beauty must appeal to the senses, must provide us with immediate enjoyment, must impress us or insinuate itself into us without any effort on our part.

Claude Debussy

French classical composer (1862-1918)

A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.

Claude Debussy

French classical composer (1862-1918)

Music is the silence between the notes.

Claude Debussy

French classical composer (1862-1918)

The century of airplanes has a right to its own music.

Claude Debussy

French classical composer (1862-1918)

In opera, there is always too much singing.

Claude Debussy

French classical composer (1862-1918)

Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art.

Claude Debussy

French classical composer (1862-1918)