Motivational Quotes

Art

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

- Cassady, Neal

Best Quotes about Art

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

Pope, Alexander

There must be hearts which know the depths of our being, and swear by us, even when the whole world forsakes us.

Gutzkow

Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

Have thy heart in heaven and thy hands upon the earth. Ascend in piety and descend in charity. For this is the Nature of Light and the way of the children.

Vaughan, Thomas

A Great man is he who does not lose his childlike heart.

Mencius (Mengzi Meng-tse)

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

Miller, Henry

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

Pascal, Blaise

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature.

Rand, Ayn

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

10.

What we play is life.

Louis Armstrong

11.

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

12.

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.

Burroughs, William S.

13.

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

14.

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

Piet Mondrian

15.

Modern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at. At least, some of them are. But they are quite impossible to live with; they are too clever, too assertive, too intellectual. Their meaning is too obvious, and their method too clearly defined. One

Wilde, Oscar

16.

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting with the gift of speech.

Simonides

17.

The highest problem of any art is to cause by appearance the illusion of a higher reality.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

18.

Let each man exercise the art he knows.

Aristophanes

19.

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.

Andre Gide

20.

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

21.

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

22.

Art is an absolute mistress; she will not be coquetted with or slighted; she requires the most entire self-devotion, and she repays with grand triumphs.

Cushman, Charlotte Saunders

23.

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

24.

What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted. [Henry Iv]

Shakespeare, William

25.

Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.

Twain, Mark

26.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.

Baldwin, James

27.

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

Thurber, James

28.

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

Bible

29.

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

Parker, Theodore

30.

The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.

Connolly, Cyril

31.

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

Varese, Edward

32.

The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.

Connolly, Cyril

33.

Art is the signature of civilizations.

Sills, Beverly

34.

Many bad artists will tell you that art is life. There's a subtle difference however. You can turn your back on art

35.

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

Apollinaire, Guillaume

36.

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

37.

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

Motherwell, Robert

38.

In any society, the artist has a responsibility. His effectiveness is certainly limited and a painter or writer cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of non-conformity alive. Thanks to them the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts. That small difference is important.

Bunuel, Luis

39.

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

Zola, Emile

40.

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

41.

At every party there are two kinds of people -- those who want to go home and those who don't. The trouble is, they are usually married to each other.

Landers, Ann

42.

Art at its most significant is a distant early warning system that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen.

Mcluhan, Marshall

43.

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

44.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

45.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

Pablo Picasso

46.

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

Mailer, Norman

47.

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

Stephen Nachmanovitch

48.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

49.

While I do not suggest that humanity will ever be able to dispense with its martyrs, I cannot avoid the suspicion that with a little more thought and a little less belief their number may be substantially reduced.

Haldane, John B. S.

50.

All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.

Eckhart, Meister