Motivational Quotes

Art

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

- Barney, Natalie Clifford

Best Quotes about Art

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

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

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

I do not know what the heart of a rascal may be, but I know what is in the heart of an honest man; it is horrible.

Maistre, Joseph De

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

Cocteau, Jean

Painting: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.

Ambrose Bierce

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

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

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

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.

Matisse, Henri

10.

Follow your heart, but be quiet for a while first. Ask questions, then feel the answer. Learn to trust your heart.

11.

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

Proverb, Chinese

12.

The heart always sees before than the head can see.

Carlyle, Thomas

13.

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

14.

I can't work without a model. I won't say I turn my back on nature ruthlessly in order to turn a study into a picture, arranging the colors, enlarging and simplifying; but in the matter of form I am too afraid of departing from the possible and the true.

Gogh, Vincent Van

15.

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

16.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

17.

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

Anderson, Bill

18.

What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.

Ruskin, John

19.

Even if I died in the service of the nation, I would be proud of it. Every drop of my blood... will contribute to the growth of this nation and to make it strong and dynamic.

Gandhi, Indira

20.

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

Melville, Herman

21.

The torments of martyrdom are probably most keenly felt by the bystanders.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

22.

Art for art's sake is a philosophy of the well-fed.

Yu Cao

23.

I don't believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there's one thing that's dangerous for an artist, it's precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.

Federico Fellini

24.

Art is man's expression of his joy in labor.

Morris, William

25.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

Jacob, Max

26.

The arts are not just instantaneous pleasure -- if you don't like it, the artist is wrong. I belong to the generation which says if you don't like it, you don't understand and you ought to find out.

Drummond, John

27.

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

Crowley, Aleister

28.

There is the falsely mystical view of art that assumes a kind of supernatural inspiration, a possession by universal forces unrelated to questions of power and privilege or the artist's relation to bread and blood. In this view, the channel of art can only become clogged and misdirected by the artist's concern with merely temporary and local disturbances. The song is higher than the struggle.

Rich, Adrienne

29.

As a general truth, it is safe to say that any picture that produces a moral impression is a bad picture.

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De

30.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

31.

If you were in a burning house and there was a cat and a Rembrandt, what would you save? The cat...you would save the cat, because the cat is alive. The art is dead. It's just paint on a canvas, ink on a page. To live for art is to deny life. It's just to destroy life.

Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

32.

As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.

Mencken, H. L.

33.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

Pablo Picasso

34.

I shut my eyes in order to see.

Paul Gauguin

35.

To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

36.

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

37.

Pictures deface walls more often than they decorate them.

Wright, Frank Lloyd

38.

All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.

Eckhart, Meister

39.

Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.

Miller, Henry

40.

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

Parker, Dorothy

41.

There are in every generation those who shrink from the ultimate sacrifice, but there are in every generation those who make it with joy and laughter and these are the salt of the generations.

Pearse, Patrick Henry

42.

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

Woodberry, George E.

43.

Thou art my glory and the exultation of y heart: thou art my hope and refuge in the day of my trouble.

Kempis, Thomas

44.

Balance is the enemy of art.

Eyre, Richard

45.

Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.

46.

Like other parties of the kind, it was first silent, then talky, then argumentative, then disputatious, then unintelligible, then altogether, then inarticulate, and then drunk. When we had reached the last step of this glorious ladder, it was difficult to get down again without stumbling.

Byron, Lord

47.

I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.

Frida Kahlo

48.

We are not here to triumph by fighting, by strata gem, or by resistance, not to fight with beasts as men. We have fought the beast and have conquered. We have only to conquer now,by suffering. This is the easier victory.

Eliot, T. S.

49.

Repetition is the death of art.

Robin Green

50.

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