Motivational Quotes

Art

It is all very well, when the pen flows, but then there are the dark days when imagination deserts one, and it is an effort to put anything down on paper. That little you have achieved stares at you at the end of the day, and you know the next morning you will have to scrape it down and start again.

- Elizabeth Aston

Best Quotes about Art

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

Motherwell, Robert

There must be hearts which know the depths of our being, and swear by us, even when the whole world forsakes us.

Gutzkow

Seek not good from without: seek it within yourselves, or you will never find it.

Suttner, Bertha Von

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

Varese, Edward

Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother's womb.

Arp, Jean

Art is an experience, not the formulation of a problem.

Anderson, Lindsay

The great artist is a slave to his ideals.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

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

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

Truman, Harry S

10.

An artist is forced by others to paint out of his own free will.

Kooning, Willem De

11.

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

Kronenberger, Louis

12.

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

Bierce, Ambrose

13.

The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

14.

I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it -- on the inside.

15.

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

Eliot, T. S.

16.

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

17.

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature.

Rand, Ayn

18.

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

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De

19.

Every artist writes his own autobiography.

Ellis, Havelock

20.

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.

21.

The people who make art their business are mostly impostors.

Picasso, Pablo

22.

Photography, fortunately, to me has not only been a profession but also a contact between people - to understand human nature and record, if possible, the best in each individual.

Nickolas Muray

23.

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

24.

Fortunately art is a community effort --a small but select community living in a spiritualized world endeavoring to interpret the wars and the solitudes of the flesh.

Ginsberg, Allen

25.

Doubt obscures the true vision of the heart.

26.

The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.

Klee, Paul

27.

It is not in life, but in art that self-fulfillment is to be found.

Woodberry, George E.

28.

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

Isak Dineson

29.

Of all the arts in which the wise excel, nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.

Buckingham, Duke of

30.

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

Ginsberg, Allen

31.

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

32.

An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have.

Warhol, Andy

33.

Art is a reality, not a definition; inasmuch as it approaches a reality, it approaches perfection, and inasmuch as it approaches a mere definition, it is imperfect and untrue.

Haydon, Benjamin

34.

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

Mann, Horace

35.

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

36.

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.

Burroughs, William S.

37.

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

38.

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

Cioran, E. M.

39.

There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.

Pablo Picasso

40.

Artists must be sacrificed to their art.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

41.

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

42.

The difference between a man who faces death for the sake of an idea and an imitator who goes in search of martyrdom is that whilst the former expresses his idea most fully in death it is the strange feeling of bitterness which comes from failure that the latter really enjoys; the former rejoices in his victory, the latter in his suffering.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

43.

When I am finishing a picture I hold some God-made object up to it -- a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand -- as a kind of final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there's a clash between the two, it is bad art.

Chagall, Marc

44.

Inside you there's an artist you don't know about. He's not interested in how things look different in moonlight.

Rumi, Jalal-Uddin

45.

Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.

Amy Lowell

46.

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

Shakespeare, William

47.

Two things are bad for the heart -- running up stairs and running down people.

Baruch, Bernard M.

48.

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

49.

It is either easy or impossible.

Dali, Salvador

50.

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

Ionesco, Eugene