Motivational Quotes

Art

The torments of martyrdom are probably most keenly felt by the bystanders.

- Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Best Quotes about Art

Art for art's sake is a philosophy of the well-fed.

Yu Cao

Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.

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 a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.

Tzara, Tristan

What of us lies in the hearts of others is our truest and deepest self.

Herder, Johann Gottfried Von

Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort.

Shaw, George Bernard

Martyrdom does not end something, it only a beginning.

Gandhi, Indira

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

Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.

W. Somerset Maugham

10.

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

11.

In art as in love, instinct is enough.

France, Anatole

12.

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

13.

Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.

Barenboim, Daniel

14.

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

Paul Gauguin

15.

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.

16.

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

17.

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

Al Capp

18.

The heart always sees before than the head can see.

Carlyle, Thomas

19.

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

20.

In every veil you see, the Divine Beauty is concealed, making every heart a slave to him. In love to him the heart finds its life; in desire for him the soul finds its happiness. The heart which loves a fair one here, though it knows it not, is really his lover.

Jami

21.

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

22.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

23.

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

24.

This grandiose tragedy that we call modern art.

Dali, Salvador

25.

As the unity of the modern world becomes increasingly a technological rather than a social affair, the techniques of the arts provide the most valuable means of insight into the real direction of our own collective purposes.

Mcluhan, Marshall

26.

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

Zola, Emile

27.

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

Varese, Edward

28.

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

29.

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

Duke Ellington

30.

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

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De

31.

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

Motherwell, Robert

32.

No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true.

Wilde, Oscar

33.

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

34.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing: we know this in countless ways.

Pascal, Blaise

35.

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

36.

This is the artist, then, life's hungry man, the glutton of eternity, beauty's miser, glory's slave.

Wolfe, Thomas

37.

What is art but a way of seeing?

Berger, Thomas

38.

No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.

Ruskin, John

39.

Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what, formerly, we could not bear to see or hear, because it was too shocking, painful, or embarrassing, art changes morals.

Sontag, Susan

40.

Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

41.

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

42.

Pop artists deal with the lowly trivia of possessions and equipment that the present generation is lugging along with it on its safari into the future.

Ballard, J. G.

43.

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.

44.

All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.

Eckhart, Meister

45.

Nothing right can be accomplished in art without enthusiasm.

Schumann, Robert

46.

Whether a party can have much success without a woman present I must ask others to decide, but one thing is certain, no party is any fun unless seasoned with folly.

Erasmus, Desiderius

47.

A heart in love with beauty never grows old.

Proverb, Turkish

48.

In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.

Fischer, Ernst

49.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

Pope, Alexander

50.

There is only one art, whose sole criterion is the power, the authenticity, the revelatory insight, the courage and suggestiveness with which it seeks its truth. Thus, from the standpoint of the work and its worth it is irrelevant to which political ideas the artist as a citizen claims allegiance, which ideas he would like to serve with his work or whether he holds any such ideas at all.

Havel, Vaclav