Motivational Quotes

Art

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.

Best Quotes about Art

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

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

For the outer sense alone perceives visible things and the eye of the heart alone seeds the invisible.

Saint-Victor, Richard of

Art has never been made while thinking of art.

Niko Stumpo

As noble Art has survived noble nature, so too she marches ahead of it, fashioning and awakening by her inspiration. Before Truth sends her triumphant light into the depths of the heart, imagination catches its rays, and the peaks of humanity will be glowing when humid night still lingers in the valleys.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

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

Artists must be sacrificed to their art.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Shaw, George Bernard

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

10.

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

Waugh, Evelyn

11.

Often while reading a book one feels that the author would have preferred to paint rather than write; one can sense the pleasure he derives from describing a landscape or a person, as if he were painting what he is saying, because deep in his heart he would have preferred to use brushes and colors.

Picasso, Pablo

12.

There is nothing enduring in life for a women except what she builds in a man's heart.

Anderson, Judith

13.

Humanity is the rich effluvium, it is the waste and the manure and the soil, and from it grows the tree of the arts.

Pound, Ezra

14.

I suppose no matter what I'm drawing, there will always be some sort of question in my mind about it. A work of art (even cartoon art)is never really finished; it is abandoned.

Brooke McEldowney

15.

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

Wolfe, Thomas

16.

I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.

Ruskin, John

17.

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

Barney, Natalie Clifford

18.

Each painting has its own way of evolving...When the painting is finished, the subject reaveals itself.

William Baziotes

19.

Art distills sensations and embodies it with enhanced meaning.

Barzun, Jacques

20.

The heart that truly loves never forgets.

Proverb

21.

Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.

Barenboim, Daniel

22.

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

Melville, Herman

23.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

24.

Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and far from commanding we are forced to obey it.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

25.

Whether you call my heart affectionate, or you call it womanish: I confess, that to my misfortune, it is soft.

Ovid

26.

We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.

John F. Kennedy

27.

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving. A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants.

Lao-Tzu

28.

The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart.

Franklin, Benjamin

29.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul. The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of Artist.

Poe, Edgar Allan

30.

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

Buckingham, Duke of

31.

You cannot kindle a fire in any other heart until it is burning in your own.

32.

Artists are, above all, men who want to become inhuman.

Apollinaire, Guillaume

33.

Two things are bad for the heart -- running up stairs and running down people.

Baruch, Bernard M.

34.

Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

Cather, Willa

35.

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

36.

Art is an experience, not the formulation of a problem.

Anderson, Lindsay

37.

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

Miller, Henry

38.

There is in every human heart Some not completely barren part, Where seeds of truth and love might grow, And flowers of generous virtue flow; To plant, to watch, to water there, This be our duty, be our care.

Bowring, Sir John

39.

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

Renoir, Pierre Auguste

40.

Modern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at. At least, some of them are. But they are quite impossible to live with; they are too clever, too assertive, too intellectual. Their meaning is too obvious, and their method too clearly defined. One

Wilde, Oscar

41.

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

Crowley, Aleister

42.

I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for religion --I have shuddered at it. I shudder no more --I could be martyred for my religion --Love is my religion --I could die for that.

Keats, John

43.

Don't waste time trying to break a man's heart; be satisfied if you can just manage to chip it in a brand new place.

Rowland, Helen

44.

In art, one idea is as good as another. If one takes the idea of trembling, for instance, all of a sudden most art starts to tremble. Michelangelo starts to tremble. El Greco starts to tremble. All the Impressionists start to tremble.

Kooning, Willem De

45.

What ever purifies the heart also fortifies it.

Blair, Hugh

46.

This grandiose tragedy that we call modern art.

Dali, Salvador

47.

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.

Murdoch, Iris

48.

The function of art is to make that understood which in the form of argument would be incomprehensible.