Motivational Quotes

Art

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

Best Quotes about Art

Nature is inside art as its content, not outside as its model.

Frye, Northrop

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

Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.

W. Somerset Maugham

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

Kennedy, John F.

Art is an absolute mistress; she will not be coquetted with or slighted; she requires the most entire self-devotion, and she repays with grand triumphs.

Cushman, Charlotte Saunders

Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why.

Faulkner, William

Art forms of the past were really considered elitist. Bach did not compose for the masses, neither did Beethoven. It was always for patrons, aristocrats, and royalty. Now we have a sort of democratic version of that, which is to say that the audience is so splintered in its interests.

David Cronenberg

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

Miller, Henry

10.

The heart that truly loves never forgets.

Proverb

11.

I see little of more importance to the future of our country and of civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

Kennedy, John F.

12.

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

13.

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

14.

Whatever an artist's personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical. He acts from or upon other artists.

Kooning, Willem De

15.

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

16.

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

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

17.

Art is the only thing that can go on mattering, once it has stopped hurting.

Bowen, Elizabeth

18.

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

Barenboim, Daniel

19.

Art at its most significant is a distant early warning system that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen.

Mcluhan, Marshall

20.

I will soon be going out to shape all the singing tomorrows.

Peri, Gabriel

21.

What we play is life.

Louis Armstrong

22.

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

23.

Why should I buy expensive art when I can make my own.

Piero Milani

24.

The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs. Artists of a large and wholesome vitality get rid of their art easily, as they breathe easily or perspire easily. But in artists of less force, the thing becomes a pressure, and produces a definite pain, which is called the artistic temperament.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

25.

Nothing right can be accomplished in art without enthusiasm.

Schumann, Robert

26.

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

27.

What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

Jefferson, Thomas

28.

Feminist art is not some tiny creek running off the great river of real art. It is not some crack in an otherwise flawless stone. It is, quite spectacularly I think, art which is not based on the subjugation of one half of the species. It is art which will take the great human themes --love, death, heroism, suffering, history itself --and render them fully human. It may also, though perhaps our imaginations are so mutilated now that we are incapable even of the ambition, introduce a new theme, one as great and as rich as those others --should we call it joy?

Dworkin, Andrea

29.

If I spit, they will take my spit and frame it as great art.

Picasso, Pablo

30.

Any artist should be grateful for a na?ve grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.

Bellow, Saul

31.

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

32.

Art for art's sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orderly product which our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths, it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden... it is the best evidence we can have of our dignity.

Forster, Edward M.

33.

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

34.

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

Varese, Edward

35.

Enjoyed it! One more drink and I'd have been under the host.

Parker, Dorothy

36.

The heart will break, but broken live on.

Byron, Lord

37.

The art of creation is older than the art of killing.

Voznesensky, Andrei

38.

Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, cannot avoid cheating truth.

Riding, Laura

39.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

40.

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting with the gift of speech.

Simonides

41.

I would rather be ashes than dust. I would rather that my spark would burn out in a brilliant blaze than be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

London, Jack

42.

I'm still an artist. I'm never gonna do a shit movie, because I've got my modeling to support me.

Jovovich, Milla

43.

Life isn't long enough for love and art.

W. Somerset Maugham

44.

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

45.

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

Baruch, Bernard M.

46.

I shut my eyes in order to see.

Paul Gauguin

47.

Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off.

Cioran, E. M.

48.

The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.

Jackson Pollock

49.

The first mistake of Art is to assume that it's serious.

Bangs, Lester

50.

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