Motivational Quotes

Art

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.

- Alfred North Whitehead

Best Quotes about Art

No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true.

Wilde, Oscar

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature.

Rand, Ayn

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

John Singer Sargent

The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.

Blackie, Professor

Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

If the wolf had ever come to our back door, he'd have had to bring a picnic lunch.

Anderson, Bill

The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

Only conservatives believe that subversion is still being carried on in the arts and that society is being shaken by it. Advanced art today is no longer a cause --it contains no moral imperative. There is no virtue in clinging to principles and standards, no vice in selling or in selling out.

Rosenberg, Harold

It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture.

10.

The artist belongs to their work, not the work to the artist.

Novalis

11.

Art is the signature of civilizations.

Sills, Beverly

12.

Bad artists always admire each other's work. They call it being large-minded and free from prejudice. But a truly great artist cannot conceive of life being shown, or beauty fashioned, under any conditions other than those he has selected.

Wilde, Oscar

13.

The head learns new things, but the heart forever practices old experiences.

Beecher, Henry Ward

14.

If I keep a green bough in my heart, the singing bird will come.

Proverb, Chinese

15.

Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it. Whoever has polished it more sees more -- more unseen forms become manifest to him.

Rumi, Jalal-Uddin

16.

Whenever, at a party, I have been in the mood to study fools, I have always looked for a great beauty: they always gather round her like flies around a fruit stall.

Richter, Jean Paul

17.

Many bad artists will tell you that art is life. There's a subtle difference however. You can turn your back on art

18.

With an apple I will astonish Paris.

Cezanne, Paul

19.

By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved.

Updike, John

20.

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.

Andre Gide

21.

He bores me. He ought to have stuck to his flying machine. [On Leonardo Da Vinci]

Renoir, Pierre Auguste

22.

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure

Baryshnikov, Mikhail

23.

What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.

Paz, Octavio

24.

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, while the heart of the fool is in the house of entertainment.

Bible

25.

Within your heart, keep one still, secret spot where dreams may go.

Driscoll, Louise

26.

The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.

Mailer, Norman

27.

The heart will break, but broken live on.

Byron, Lord

28.

Let each man exercise the art he knows.

Aristophanes

29.

Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.

Edith Wharton

30.

Photography, fortunately, to me has not only been a profession but also a contact between people - to understand human nature and record, if possible, the best in each individual.

Nickolas Muray

31.

Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.

G. K. Chesterton

32.

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

33.

Where are you searching for me, friend? Look! Here am I right within you. Not in temple, nor in mosque, not in Kaaba nor Kailas, but here right within you am I.

Kabir

34.

Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.

Tynan, Kenneth

35.

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

Varese, Edward

36.

For us artists there waits the joyous compromise through art with all that wounded or defeated us in daily life; in this way, not to evade destiny, as the ordinary people try to do, but to fulfil it in its true potential --the imagination.

Durrell, Lawrence

37.

This is the artist, then, life's hungry man, the glutton of eternity, beauty's miser, glory's slave.

Wolfe, Thomas

38.

I can't tell you what art does and how it does it, but I know that often art has judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past suffered, so that it has never been forgotten. Art, when it functions like this, becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring, guts, and honor.

Berger, John

39.

Twentieth-century art may start with nothing, but it flourishes by virtue of its belief in itself, in the possibility of control over what seems essentially uncontrollable, in the coherence of the inchoate, and in its ability to create its own values.

Alvarez, A.

40.

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

Paul Gauguin

41.

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

Ciardi, John

42.

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

Holyfield, Evander

43.

The vitality of a new movement in Art must be gauged by the fury it arouses.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

44.

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined; no sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet to chase the glowing hours with flying feet.

Gordon, George

45.

You're confusing product with process. Most people, when they criticize, whether they like it or hate it, they're talking about product. That's not art, that's the result of art. Art, to whatever degree we can get a handle on (I'm not sure that we really can) is a process. It begins in the heart and the mind with the eyes and hands.

Jeff Melvoin

46.

I am more afraid of my own heart than the Pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great Pope, Self.

Luther, Martin

47.

Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

48.

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

49.

I will greet this day with love in my heart. For this is the greatest secret of success in all ventures. Muscles can split a shield and even destroy life itself but only the unseen power of love can open the hearts of man. And until I master this act I will remain no more than a peddler in the marketplace. I will make love my greatest weapon and none on who I call can defend upon its force... my love will melt all hearts liken to the sun whose rays soften the coldest day.

Mandino, Og

50.

Look at every path closely and deliberately, then ask ourselves this crucial question: Does this path have a heart? If it does, then the path is good. If it doesn't, it is of no use.

Castaneda, Carlos