Motivational Quotes

Art

As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn't make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting -- the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.

- Bellow, Saul

Best Quotes about Art

All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.

Eckhart, Meister

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.

Picasso, Pablo

As the twentieth century ends, commerce and culture are coming closer together. The distinction between life and art has been eroded by fifty years of enhanced communications, ever-improving reproduction technologies and increasing wealth.

Bayley, Stephen

When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art.

Chagall, Marc

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

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

Apollinaire, Guillaume

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

A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind.

Ionesco, Eugene

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

Ginsberg, Allen

10.

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

11.

A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.

Edmond de Goncourt

12.

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.

13.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

Pope, Alexander

14.

Those who write for lucre or fame are grosser than the cartel robbers, for they steal the genius of the people, which is its will to resist evil.

Dahlberg, Edward

15.

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

16.

In art there are tears that lie too deep for thought.

Kronenberger, Louis

17.

I can't criticize what I don't understand. If you want to call this art, you've got the benefit of all my doubts.

Charles Rosin

18.

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

19.

[Abstract art is] a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

Al Capp

20.

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

Woodberry, George E.

21.

Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.

Kael, Pauline

22.

The heart that truly loves never forgets.

Proverb

23.

Art is so wonderfully irrational, exuberantly pointless, but necessary all the same. Pointless and yet necessary, that's hard for a puritan to understand.

Grass, Gunther

24.

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

25.

Art is the most passionate orgy within man's grasp.

Dubuffet, Jean

26.

O, had I but followed the arts!

Shakespeare, William

27.

Whether joy or sorrowful, the heart needs a double, because a joy shared is doubled and a pain that is shared is divided.

Ruckett

28.

Nothing right can be accomplished in art without enthusiasm.

Schumann, Robert

29.

Every artist was first an amateur.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

30.

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

31.

Wherever art appears, life disappears.

Picabia, Francis

32.

What I dream of is an art of balance.

Henri Matisse

33.

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

Ovid

34.

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

Henry Ward Beecher

35.

The heart is the best reflective thinker.

Phillips, Wendell

36.

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

Morris, William

37.

Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

38.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

39.

Pop artists deal with the lowly trivia of possessions and equipment that the present generation is lugging along with it on its safari into the future.

Ballard, J. G.

40.

Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.

Weil, Simone

41.

One thing that makes art different from life is that in art things have a shape... it allows us to fix our emotions on events at the moment they occur, it permits a union of heart and mind and tongue and tear.

French, Marilyn

42.

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.

43.

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

Bible

44.

The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.

Berle, Adolf

45.

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

Picasso, Pablo

46.

What is art but life upon the larger scale, the higher. When, graduating up in a spiral line of still expanding and ascending gyres, it pushes toward the intense significance of all things, hungry for the infinite?

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

47.

Art is a reality, not a definition; inasmuch as it approaches a reality, it approaches perfection, and inasmuch as it approaches a mere definition, it is imperfect and untrue.

Haydon, Benjamin

48.

Impartial. Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.

Bierce, Ambrose

49.

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

50.

Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of one's chosen form.

Stephen Nachmanovitch