Motivational Quotes

Art

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

Best Quotes about Art

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.

Novalis

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to the feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.

Gogh, Vincent Van

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

John Singer Sargent

The great artist is a slave to his ideals.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

The artist must conceive with warmth yet execute with coolness.

Winkelmann

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

Cocteau, Jean

I see little of more importance to the future of our country and of civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

Kennedy, John F.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

I can't work without a model. I won't say I turn my back on nature ruthlessly in order to turn a study into a picture, arranging the colors, enlarging and simplifying; but in the matter of form I am too afraid of departing from the possible and the true.

Gogh, Vincent Van

10.

Advice from a veteran trapeze performer: Throw your heart over the bars and your body will follow.

11.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

12.

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

Kennedy, John F.

13.

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

14.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

15.

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

16.

Art is the signature of civilizations.

Sills, Beverly

17.

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.

18.

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

19.

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.

Alfred North Whitehead

20.

I suppose no matter what I'm drawing, there will always be some sort of question in my mind about it. A work of art (even cartoon art)is never really finished; it is abandoned.

Brooke McEldowney

21.

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

Eliot, T. S.

22.

I would rather be ashes than dust. I would rather that my spark would burn out in a brilliant blaze than be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

London, Jack

23.

I do not know what the heart of a rascal may be, but I know what is in the heart of an honest man; it is horrible.

Maistre, Joseph De

24.

Even if I died in the service of the nation, I would be proud of it. Every drop of my blood... will contribute to the growth of this nation and to make it strong and dynamic.

Gandhi, Indira

25.

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

26.

No sheath shall hold what finds its home in flesh.

Proverb

27.

Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors?

Edith Wharton

28.

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

Howe, Nathaniel

29.

All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.

Eckhart, Meister

30.

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

Updike, John

31.

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.

32.

I say that good painters imitated nature; but that bad ones vomited it.

Miguel de Cervantes

33.

Art, that great undogmatized church.

Key, Ellen

34.

Art is the only thing that can go on mattering, once it has stopped hurting.

Bowen, Elizabeth

35.

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

Henry Ward Beecher

36.

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

37.

The focus should be on the players. I'm here a long time. You can call me in the summer. Our seniors will be gone.

Smith, Dean

38.

The heart always sees before than the head can see.

Carlyle, Thomas

39.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul. The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of Artist.

Poe, Edgar Allan

40.

[Abstract art is] a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

Al Capp

41.

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

42.

I know just how frustrating it can be when you're tired and exhausted, but you still want to draw something.

Ward Jenkins

43.

Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.

Twain, Mark

44.

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.

Joseph Chilton Pearce

45.

The first mistake of Art is to assume that it's serious.