Motivational Quotes

Art

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

Best Quotes about Art

Art is the objectification of feeling.

Langer, Suzanne K.

Abstract Art: A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

Capp, Al

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.

Keller, Helen

Of all the arts in which the wise excel, nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.

Buckingham, Duke of

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

Picasso, Pablo

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

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.

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

All great art, and today all great artlessness, must appear extreme to the mass of men, as we know them today. It springs from the anguish of great souls. From the souls of men not formed, but deformed in factories whose inspiration is pelf.

Trocchi, Alexander

10.

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist's way of scribbling Kilroy was here on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.

Faulkner, William

11.

Enjoyed it! One more drink and I'd have been under the host.

Parker, Dorothy

12.

Feminist art is not some tiny creek running off the great river of real art. It is not some crack in an otherwise flawless stone. It is, quite spectacularly I think, art which is not based on the subjugation of one half of the species. It is art which will take the great human themes --love, death, heroism, suffering, history itself --and render them fully human. It may also, though perhaps our imaginations are so mutilated now that we are incapable even of the ambition, introduce a new theme, one as great and as rich as those others --should we call it joy?

Dworkin, Andrea

13.

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

Weil, Simone

14.

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

Simonides

15.

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

16.

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

17.

Why should I buy expensive art when I can make my own.

Piero Milani

18.

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

19.

A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.

Baudelaire, Charles

20.

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

Ovid

21.

Art, that great undogmatized church.

Key, Ellen

22.

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.

Pablo Picasso

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

Art has never been made while thinking of art.

Niko Stumpo

29.

Each of the arts whose office is to refine, purify, adorn, embellish and grace life is under the patronage of a muse, no god being found worthy to preside over them.

Farnham, Eliza

30.

You cannot kindle a fire in any other heart until it is burning in your own.

31.

I do not know what the heart of a rascal may be, but I know what is in the heart of an honest man; it is horrible.

Maistre, Joseph De

32.

Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century.

Mcluhan, Marshall

33.

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

34.

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

35.

The people who make art their business are mostly impostors.

Picasso, Pablo

36.

All art is an imitation of nature.

Seneca

37.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

38.

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

Shaw, George Bernard

39.

Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.

G. K. Chesterton

40.

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

41.

Art is the only thing that can go on mattering, once it has stopped hurting.

Bowen, Elizabeth

42.

What is art but a way of seeing?

Berger, Thomas

43.

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

Waugh, Evelyn

44.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

45.

Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off.

Cioran, E. M.

46.

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

47.

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

Connolly, Cyril

48.

The eyes see what the heart loves. If the heart loves God and is single in this devotion, then the eyes will see God whether others see Him or not.

Wiersbe, Warren

49.

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

50.

The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.

Gide, Andre