Motivational Quotes

Art

I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none.

- Ben Shahn

Best Quotes about Art

Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity, never of the correctness of a belief.

Schnitzler, Arthur

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing: we know this in countless ways.

Pascal, Blaise

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

Miller, Henry

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

The public history of modern art is the story of conventional people not knowing what they are dealing with.

Motherwell, Robert

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

One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is when we see its separate forms jumbled together.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Jovovich, Milla

10.

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined; no sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet to chase the glowing hours with flying feet.

Gordon, George

11.

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.

Walt Whitman

12.

The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn't make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it.

Stein, Gertrude

13.

Art is good when it springs from necessity. This kind of origin is the guarantee of its value; there is no other.

Cassady, Neal

14.

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

Brancusi, Constantin

15.

Art is permitted to survive only if it renounces the right to be different, and integrates itself into the omnipotent realm of the profane.

Adorno, Theodor W.

16.

What better way to prove that you understand a subject than to make money out of it?

Rosenberg, Harold

17.

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

Eugene Delacroix

18.

The people who make art their business are mostly impostors.

Picasso, Pablo

19.

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

Barenboim, Daniel

20.

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

21.

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.

22.

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

John Singer Sargent

23.

Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

24.

Some people carry their heart in their head and some carry their head in their heart. The trick is to keep them apart yet working together.

Hare, David

25.

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

Bierce, Ambrose

26.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

27.

The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

Eliot, T. S.

28.

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

Wolfe, Thomas

29.

Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

30.

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.

31.

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

32.

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

Voznesensky, Andrei

33.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

34.

Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what, formerly, we could not bear to see or hear, because it was too shocking, painful, or embarrassing, art changes morals.

Sontag, Susan

35.

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

36.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

37.

Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.

Edith Wharton

38.

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

Woodberry, George E.

39.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

40.

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

41.

Art -- the one achievement of Man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised.

Thurber, James

42.

What I dream of is an art of balance.

Henri Matisse

43.

The heart always sees before than the head can see.

Carlyle, Thomas

44.

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

45.

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

Paul Gauguin

46.

Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.

Latimer, Bishop Hugh

47.

Pictures deface walls more often than they decorate them.

Wright, Frank Lloyd

48.

I never spend more than one hour in a gallery. That is as long as one's power of appreciation persists.