Motivational Quotes

Art

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

Best Quotes about Art

The artist belongs to their work, not the work to the artist.

Novalis

Art has an enemy called ignorance.

Johnson, Ben

An artist is forced by others to paint out of his own free will.

Kooning, Willem De

For the outer sense alone perceives visible things and the eye of the heart alone seeds the invisible.

Saint-Victor, Richard of

No manager ever won no ballgames.

Anderson, Sparky

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 art as in love, instinct is enough.

France, Anatole

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

Henry Ward Beecher

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.

E. M. Forster

10.

The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.

Piet Mondrian

11.

I have joined my heart to thee: all that exists are thou. O Lord, beloved of my heart, thou art the home of all; where indeed is the heart in which thou dost not dwell?

Jafar

12.

The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.

Mailer, Norman

13.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

14.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

15.

The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

16.

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.

Waugh, Evelyn

17.

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

18.

Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.

Sand, George

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Holyfield, Evander

22.

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

Kronenberger, Louis

23.

The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.

Geldzahler, Henry

24.

The vitality of a new movement in Art must be gauged by the fury it arouses.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

25.

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

Anderson, Bill

26.

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

Dubuffet, Jean

27.

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

Ionesco, Eugene

28.

It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture.

29.

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

30.

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

31.

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood -- never.

Camus, Albert

32.

Is there not an art, a music, and a stream of words that shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life?

Wordsworth, William

33.

Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

Cather, Willa

34.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

35.

It is all very well, when the pen flows, but then there are the dark days when imagination deserts one, and it is an effort to put anything down on paper. That little you have achieved stares at you at the end of the day, and you know the next morning you will have to scrape it down and start again.

Elizabeth Aston

36.

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

37.

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

Crowley, Aleister

38.

Fine art, that exists for itself alone, is art in a final state of impotence. If nobody, including the artist, acknowledges art as a means of knowing the world, then art is relegated to a kind of rumpus room of the mind and the irresponsibility of the artist and the irrelevance of art to actual living becomes part and parcel of the practice of art.

Carter, Angela

39.

The difference between a man who faces death for the sake of an idea and an imitator who goes in search of martyrdom is that whilst the former expresses his idea most fully in death it is the strange feeling of bitterness which comes from failure that the latter really enjoys; the former rejoices in his victory, the latter in his suffering.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

40.

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

Cocteau, Jean

41.

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

42.

With an apple I will astonish Paris.

Cezanne, Paul

43.

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

44.

As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.

Mencken, H. L.

45.

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.