Motivational Quotes

Art

A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.

- Edmond de Goncourt

Best Quotes about Art

The creation of art is not the fulfillment of a need but the creation of a need. The world never needed Beethoven's Fifth Symphony until he created it. Now we could not live without it.

Louis I Kahn

Nothing right can be accomplished in art without enthusiasm.

Schumann, Robert

The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs. Artists of a large and wholesome vitality get rid of their art easily, as they breathe easily or perspire easily. But in artists of less force, the thing becomes a pressure, and produces a definite pain, which is called the artistic temperament.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

The artist is the child of his time; but woe to him if he is also its disciple, or even its favorite.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent businessman.

Lewis, Sinclair

Those who write for lucre or fame are grosser than the cartel robbers, for they steal the genius of the people, which is its will to resist evil.

Dahlberg, Edward

The way of the world is, to praise dead saints, and persecute living ones.

Howe, Nathaniel

Look at every path closely and deliberately, then ask ourselves this crucial question: Does this path have a heart? If it does, then the path is good. If it doesn't, it is of no use.

Castaneda, Carlos

In art there are tears that lie too deep for thought.

Kronenberger, Louis

10.

Every artist was first an amateur.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

11.

If that's art, I'm a Hottentot!

Truman, Harry S

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

15.

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

16.

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

Cioran, E. M.

17.

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

Parker, Theodore

18.

It is more difficult, and it calls for higher energies of soul, to live a martyr than to die one.

Mann, Horace

19.

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

20.

Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of one's chosen form.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

21.

In any society, the artist has a responsibility. His effectiveness is certainly limited and a painter or writer cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of non-conformity alive. Thanks to them the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts. That small difference is important.

Bunuel, Luis

22.

The artist must conceive with warmth yet execute with coolness.

Winkelmann

23.

The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.

Jackson Pollock

24.

Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, cannot avoid cheating truth.

Riding, Laura

25.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

Pope, Alexander

26.

The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.

Mailer, Norman

27.

No manager ever won no ballgames.

Anderson, Sparky

28.

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

Barney, Natalie Clifford

29.

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

30.

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

31.

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

Paul Gauguin

32.

It is a weakness that I lead from my heart, and not my head?

Diana, Princess of Wales

33.

The creative artist seems to be almost the only kind of man that you could never meet on neutral ground. You can only meet him as an artist. He sees nothing objectively because his own ego is always in the foreground of every picture.

Chandler, Raymond

34.

It doesn't matter if people are interested. It's about you taking your stuff and shouting out into the void.

Jadelr and Cristina Cordova

35.

What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.

Paz, Octavio

36.

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

Churchill, Winston

37.

Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature.

Cicero

38.

All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.

Eckhart, Meister

39.

In free society art is not a weapon. Artists are not engineers of the soul.

Kennedy, John F.

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Parker, Dorothy

43.

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

Ruckett

44.

It is time for us all to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever -- the one who recognizes the challenges and does something about it.

Lombardi, Vince

45.

Impartial. Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.

Bierce, Ambrose

46.

Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

Einstein, Albert

47.

Doubt obscures the true vision of the heart.

48.

There is in every human heart Some not completely barren part, Where seeds of truth and love might grow, And flowers of generous virtue flow; To plant, to watch, to water there, This be our duty, be our care.

Bowring, Sir John

49.

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

50.

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

Proust, Marcel