Motivational Quotes

Art

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

Best Quotes about Art

Is there not an art, a music, and a stream of words that shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life?

Wordsworth, William

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

John Singer Sargent

The people who make art their business are mostly impostors.

Picasso, Pablo

One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honor or observation.

Scott, Sir Walter

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

Isak Dineson

Art, that great undogmatized church.

Key, Ellen

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

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.

Martyrdom does not end something, it only a beginning.

Gandhi, Indira

10.

A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment.

Trilling, Lionel

11.

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need. [when asked how he managed to make his remarkable statues.]

Rodin, Auguste

12.

I am as content to die for God's eternal truth on the scaffold as in any other way.

Brown, John Mason

13.

In art as in love, instinct is enough.

France, Anatole

14.

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

15.

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

16.

Whether joy or sorrowful, the heart needs a double, because a joy shared is doubled and a pain that is shared is divided.

Ruckett

17.

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

West, Rebecca

18.

Had we never lov'd sae kindly, Had we never lov'd sae blindly, Never met -- or never parted -- we had never been broken-hearted.

Burns, Robert

19.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

20.

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

21.

I never spend more than one hour in a gallery. That is as long as one's power of appreciation persists.

W. Somerset Maugham

22.

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

Piero Milani

23.

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

Crowley, Aleister

24.

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

25.

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.

26.

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

27.

Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.

Conrad, Joseph

28.

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

29.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

Jacob, Max

30.

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

Dubuffet, Jean

31.

Wherever art appears, life disappears.

Picabia, Francis

32.

Humanity is the rich effluvium, it is the waste and the manure and the soil, and from it grows the tree of the arts.

Pound, Ezra

33.

Art for art's sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orderly product which our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths, it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden... it is the best evidence we can have of our dignity.

Forster, Edward M.

34.

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

35.

It isn't enough for your heart to break because everybody's heart is broken now.

Ginsberg, Allen

36.

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

37.

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

Zola, Emile

38.

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

William Baziotes

39.

Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it. Whoever has polished it more sees more -- more unseen forms become manifest to him.

Rumi, Jalal-Uddin

40.

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

Ovid

41.

Art is so wonderfully irrational, exuberantly pointless, but necessary all the same. Pointless and yet necessary, that's hard for a puritan to understand.

Grass, Gunther

42.

It's not your painting anymore. It stopped being your painting the moment that you finished it.

Jeff Melvoin

43.

By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved.

Updike, John

44.

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

45.

This grandiose tragedy that we call modern art.

Dali, Salvador

46.

There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause.

Zedong, Mao

47.

Follow your heart, but be quiet for a while first. Ask questions, then feel the answer. Learn to trust your heart.

48.

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

Pablo Picasso

49.

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

50.

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