Motivational Quotes

Art

The more a man cultivates the arts the less he fornicates. A more and more apparent cleavage occurs between the spirit and the brute.

- Baudelaire, Charles

Best Quotes about Art

The heart will break, but broken live on.

Byron, Lord

Through art we express our conception of what nature is not.

Picasso, Pablo

Seek not good from without: seek it within yourselves, or you will never find it.

Suttner, Bertha Von

Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing --to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of Caesar, or an oration. Presently we return to the sight of another that globes itself into a whole as did the first, for example, a beautiful garden; and nothing seems worth doing in life but laying out a garden.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

The True Artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

The notion that the public accepts or rejects anything in modern art is merely romantic fiction. The game is completed and the trophies distributed long before the public knows what has happened.

Wolfe, Thomas

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

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

Holyfield, Evander

10.

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

11.

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

Crowley, Aleister

12.

The artist is the child of his time; but woe to him if he is also its disciple, or even its favorite.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

13.

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

14.

Wealth and want equally harden the human heart, like frost and fire both are alien to human flesh.

Parker, Theodore

15.

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.

16.

What of us lies in the hearts of others is our truest and deepest self.

Herder, Johann Gottfried Von

17.

The heart is the best reflective thinker.

Phillips, Wendell

18.

When I am finishing a picture I hold some God-made object up to it -- a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand -- as a kind of final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there's a clash between the two, it is bad art.

Chagall, Marc

19.

It isn't enough for your heart to break because everybody's heart is broken now.

Ginsberg, Allen

20.

In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.

Fischer, Ernst

21.

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.

22.

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.

Eugene Delacroix

23.

There never was any heart truly great and generous, that was not also tender and compassionate.

Frost, Robert

24.

The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.

Klee, Paul

25.

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.

Novalis

26.

A painting in a museum probably hears more foolish remarks than anything else in the world.

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De

27.

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

Varese, Edward

28.

I am an artist I am here to live out loud.

Zola, Emile

29.

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.

30.

Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.

Amy Lowell

31.

The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.

Huxley, Aldous

32.

Painting is an attempt to come to terms with life. There are as many solutions as there are human beings.

George Tooker

33.

I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.

Roosevelt, Theodore

34.

It is not flesh and blood, but heart which makes us fathers and sons.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

35.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

Pablo Picasso

36.

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

37.

The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.

Nightingale, Florence

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.

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

Voznesensky, Andrei

40.

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

41.

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

42.

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

Cocteau, Jean

43.

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

44.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

45.

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

Jackson Pollock

46.

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

47.

With an apple I will astonish Paris.

Cezanne, Paul

48.

The artist must conceive with warmth yet execute with coolness.

Winkelmann

49.

Faint hearts never win fair ladies.

Proverb, Danish

50.

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