Motivational Quotes

Art

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

Best Quotes about Art

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

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

To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

Art has never been made while thinking of art.

Niko Stumpo

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Walt Whitman

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

Simonides

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.

Wilson, Robert

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

Bible

10.

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

11.

No sheath shall hold what finds its home in flesh.

Proverb

12.

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

John Singer Sargent

13.

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

14.

The more a man cultivates the arts the less he fornicates. A more and more apparent cleavage occurs between the spirit and the brute.

Baudelaire, Charles

15.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

16.

Art the end result of perception, wisdom, intelligence, discipline, hard work, passion, luck, accident, and coincidence.

17.

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

18.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

19.

The object of art is to give life a shape. [Midsummer Nights Dream]

Shakespeare, William

20.

Pop artists deal with the lowly trivia of possessions and equipment that the present generation is lugging along with it on its safari into the future.

Ballard, J. G.

21.

O, had I but followed the arts!

Shakespeare, William

22.

In art as in love, instinct is enough.

France, Anatole

23.

There are in every generation those who shrink from the ultimate sacrifice, but there are in every generation those who make it with joy and laughter and these are the salt of the generations.

Pearse, Patrick Henry

24.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

25.

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

Ben Shahn

26.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

27.

Where are you searching for me, friend? Look! Here am I right within you. Not in temple, nor in mosque, not in Kaaba nor Kailas, but here right within you am I.

Kabir

28.

With an apple I will astonish Paris.

Cezanne, Paul

29.

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

30.

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

Ovid

31.

All art is an imitation of nature.

Seneca

32.

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

33.

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

Ambrose Bierce

34.

If we keep an open mind, too much is likely to fall into it.

Barney, Natalie Clifford

35.

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

Motherwell, Robert

36.

Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

40.

If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently and replace it tenderly in its Master's presence. And even if you did nothing during the whole ofyour hour but bring your heart back and place it again in Our Lord's presence, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed.

Francis De Sales, St.

41.

You're confusing product with process. Most people, when they criticize, whether they like it or hate it, they're talking about product. That's not art, that's the result of art. Art, to whatever degree we can get a handle on (I'm not sure that we really can) is a process. It begins in the heart and the mind with the eyes and hands.

Jeff Melvoin

42.

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

Shakespeare, William

43.

Let each man exercise the art he knows.

Aristophanes

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Wolfe, Thomas

48.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

49.

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

50.

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

Parker, Theodore