Motivational Quotes

Art

Art forms of the past were really considered elitist. Bach did not compose for the masses, neither did Beethoven. It was always for patrons, aristocrats, and royalty. Now we have a sort of democratic version of that, which is to say that the audience is so splintered in its interests.

- David Cronenberg

Best Quotes about Art

Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.

Twain, Mark

The artist is the opposite of the politically minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. The artist does not tinker with the universe; he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life.

Miller, Henry

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

Proust, Marcel

Wherever art appears, life disappears.

Picabia, Francis

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

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

Picasso, Pablo

There is nothing enduring in life for a women except what she builds in a man's heart.

Anderson, Judith

Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.

West, Rebecca

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

10.

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

11.

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.

12.

Art distills sensations and embodies it with enhanced meaning.

Barzun, Jacques

13.

The less you open your heart to others, the more your heart suffers.

Chopra, Deepak

14.

The idea of a mass audience was really an invention of the Industrial Revolution.

David Cronenberg

15.

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

16.

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

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

17.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

18.

The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.

Nightingale, Florence

19.

Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and far from commanding we are forced to obey it.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

20.

But the one thing you should. not do is to suppose that when something is wrong with the arts, it is wrong with the arts ONLY.

Pound, Ezra

21.

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

Camus, Albert

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

25.

Doubt obscures the true vision of the heart.

26.

Every artist was first an amateur.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

27.

Art is permitted to survive only if it renounces the right to be different, and integrates itself into the omnipotent realm of the profane.

Adorno, Theodor W.

28.

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

29.

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

Shakespeare, William

30.

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

31.

The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart.

Franklin, Benjamin

32.

All art is an imitation of nature.

Seneca

33.

Art imitates Nature in this; not to dare is to dwindle.

Updike, John

34.

I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for religion --I have shuddered at it. I shudder no more --I could be martyred for my religion --Love is my religion --I could die for that.

Keats, John

35.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

36.

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

Novalis

37.

Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity, never of the correctness of a belief.

Schnitzler, Arthur

38.

I will soon be going out to shape all the singing tomorrows.

Peri, Gabriel

39.

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

40.

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

41.

Every artist writes his own autobiography.

Ellis, Havelock

42.

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

Barney, Natalie Clifford

43.

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

44.

Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me leave to do my utmost.

Isak Dineson

45.

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

Weil, Simone

46.

The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

Eliot, T. S.

47.

We are not here to triumph by fighting, by strata gem, or by resistance, not to fight with beasts as men. We have fought the beast and have conquered. We have only to conquer now,by suffering. This is the easier victory.

Eliot, T. S.

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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