Motivational Quotes

Art

[Abstract art is] a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

- Al Capp

Best Quotes about Art

Contrary to popular belief an artist is never ahead of his time, but most people are far behind theirs.

Varese, Edward

Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

If we keep an open mind, too much is likely to fall into it.

Barney, Natalie Clifford

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

John Singer Sargent

Advice from a veteran trapeze performer: Throw your heart over the bars and your body will follow.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing: we know this in countless ways.

Pascal, Blaise

I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

Orson Welles

Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

Einstein, Albert

In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent businessman.

Lewis, Sinclair

10.

I shut my eyes in order to see.

Paul Gauguin

11.

There is no true expertise in the humanities without knowing all of the humanities. Art is a vast, ancient interconnected web-work, a fabricated tradition. Over-concentration on any one point is a distortion.

Paglia, Camille

12.

It is not in life, but in art that self-fulfillment is to be found.

Woodberry, George E.

13.

But the one thing you should. not do is to suppose that when something is wrong with the arts, it is wrong with the arts ONLY.

Pound, Ezra

14.

In any society, the artist has a responsibility. His effectiveness is certainly limited and a painter or writer cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of non-conformity alive. Thanks to them the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts. That small difference is important.

Bunuel, Luis

15.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.

Baldwin, James

16.

Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort.

Shaw, George Bernard

17.

No manager ever won no ballgames.

Anderson, Sparky

18.

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

Miller, Henry

19.

I have joined my heart to thee: all that exists are thou. O Lord, beloved of my heart, thou art the home of all; where indeed is the heart in which thou dost not dwell?

Jafar

20.

Inside you there's an artist you don't know about. He's not interested in how things look different in moonlight.

Rumi, Jalal-Uddin

21.

I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none.

Ben Shahn

22.

Art distills sensations and embodies it with enhanced meaning.

Barzun, Jacques

23.

[Abstract art is] a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

Al Capp

24.

Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of one's chosen form.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

25.

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.

Waugh, Evelyn

26.

I know just how frustrating it can be when you're tired and exhausted, but you still want to draw something.

Ward Jenkins

27.

The public history of modern art is the story of conventional people not knowing what they are dealing with.

Motherwell, Robert

28.

Art imitates Nature in this; not to dare is to dwindle.

Updike, John

29.

In free society art is not a weapon. Artists are not engineers of the soul.

Kennedy, John F.

30.

The object of art is to give life a shape. [Midsummer Nights Dream]

Shakespeare, William

31.

A Great man is he who does not lose his childlike heart.

Mencius (Mengzi Meng-tse)

32.

It is more difficult, and it calls for higher energies of soul, to live a martyr than to die one.

Mann, Horace

33.

In our own hearts, we mold the whole world's hereafters; and in our own hearts we fashion our own gods.

Melville, Herman

34.

The great artist is a slave to his ideals.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

35.

It is not the size of a man but the size of his heart that matters.

Holyfield, Evander

36.

Art is good when it springs from necessity. This kind of origin is the guarantee of its value; there is no other.

Cassady, Neal

37.

There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.

Pablo Picasso

38.

Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere.

Apollinaire, Guillaume

39.

Doubt obscures the true vision of the heart.

40.

Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves they have a better idea.

Ciardi, John

41.

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

Crowley, Aleister

42.

The powerful play goes on -- and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

43.

Art -- the one achievement of Man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised.

Thurber, James

44.

As the unity of the modern world becomes increasingly a technological rather than a social affair, the techniques of the arts provide the most valuable means of insight into the real direction of our own collective purposes.

Mcluhan, Marshall

45.

Whether a party can have much success without a woman present I must ask others to decide, but one thing is certain, no party is any fun unless seasoned with folly.

Erasmus, Desiderius

46.

Of all the arts in which the wise excel, nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.

Buckingham, Duke of

47.

I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it -- on the inside.

48.

Abstract Art: A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

Capp, Al

49.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

Nietzsche, Friedrich