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

Any artist should be grateful for a na?ve grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.

Bellow, Saul

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

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

Parker, Theodore

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

Capp, Al

Labor is the beginning, the middle, and the end of art.

Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere.

Apollinaire, Guillaume

I will greet this day with love in my heart. For this is the greatest secret of success in all ventures. Muscles can split a shield and even destroy life itself but only the unseen power of love can open the hearts of man. And until I master this act I will remain no more than a peddler in the marketplace. I will make love my greatest weapon and none on who I call can defend upon its force... my love will melt all hearts liken to the sun whose rays soften the coldest day.

Mandino, Og

In art, one idea is as good as another. If one takes the idea of trembling, for instance, all of a sudden most art starts to tremble. Michelangelo starts to tremble. El Greco starts to tremble. All the Impressionists start to tremble.

Kooning, Willem De

10.

With an apple I will astonish Paris.

Cezanne, Paul

11.

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to the feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.

Gogh, Vincent Van

12.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

13.

Every artist writes his own autobiography.

Ellis, Havelock

14.

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

15.

A painting in a museum probably hears more foolish remarks than anything else in the world.

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De

16.

As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.

Mencken, H. L.

17.

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

18.

Whatever an artist's personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical. He acts from or upon other artists.

Kooning, Willem De

19.

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

20.

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

Cocteau, Jean

21.

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.

22.

Art for art's sake is a philosophy of the well-fed.

Yu Cao

23.

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

24.

If I didn't start painting, I would have raised chickens.

Moses, Grandma

25.

Painting: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.

Ambrose Bierce

26.

As a general truth, it is safe to say that any picture that produces a moral impression is a bad picture.

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De

27.

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

Varese, Edward

28.

Each painting has its own way of evolving...When the painting is finished, the subject reaveals itself.

William Baziotes

29.

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

Ionesco, Eugene

30.

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

31.

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

32.

The notion that the public accepts or rejects anything in modern art is merely romantic fiction. The game is completed and the trophies distributed long before the public knows what has happened.

Wolfe, Thomas

33.

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

Dubuffet, Jean

34.

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

Kael, Pauline

35.

What I dream of is an art of balance.

Henri Matisse

36.

Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature.

Cicero

37.

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

Pablo Picasso

38.

I can't tell you what art does and how it does it, but I know that often art has judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past suffered, so that it has never been forgotten. Art, when it functions like this, becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring, guts, and honor.

Berger, John

39.

The work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal.

Breton, Andre

40.

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

41.

A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.

Proust, Marcel

42.

It is not flesh and blood, but heart which makes us fathers and sons.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

43.

Every artist was first an amateur.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

44.

Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.

Miller, Henry

45.

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

46.

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

Parker, Dorothy

47.

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

48.

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

Waugh, Evelyn

49.

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

Crowley, Aleister

50.

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