Motivational Quotes

Art

I don't believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there's one thing that's dangerous for an artist, it's precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.

- Federico Fellini

Best Quotes about Art

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

Jacob, Max

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

Conrad, Joseph

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

Riding, Laura

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

Duke Ellington

The artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business.

Berryman, John

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

Often while reading a book one feels that the author would have preferred to paint rather than write; one can sense the pleasure he derives from describing a landscape or a person, as if he were painting what he is saying, because deep in his heart he would have preferred to use brushes and colors.

Picasso, Pablo

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

Cioran, E. M.

In art, one idea is as good as another. If one takes the idea of trembling, for instance, all of a sudden most art starts to tremble. Michelangelo starts to tremble. El Greco starts to tremble. All the Impressionists start to tremble.

Kooning, Willem De

10.

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

Gutzkow

11.

The artist belongs to their work, not the work to the artist.

Novalis

12.

For the outer sense alone perceives visible things and the eye of the heart alone seeds the invisible.

Saint-Victor, Richard of

13.

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

Henry Ward Beecher

14.

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

15.

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

Shakespeare, William

16.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

17.

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.

Andre Gide

18.

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.

Matisse, Henri

19.

Through art we express our conception of what nature is not.

Picasso, Pablo

20.

I can't criticize what I don't understand. If you want to call this art, you've got the benefit of all my doubts.

Charles Rosin

21.

Love can heal a broken heart.

22.

The heart is the best reflective thinker.

Phillips, Wendell

23.

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

24.

Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation.

Davis, Angela Y.

25.

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

26.

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

Yu Cao

27.

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

28.

Repetition is the death of art.

Robin Green

29.

Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.

Weil, Simone

30.

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

31.

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

Diana, Princess of Wales

32.

To write is to become disinterested. There is a certain renunciation in art.

Camus, Albert

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.

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

Ovid

35.

Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.

Cather, Willa

36.

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure

Baryshnikov, Mikhail

37.

All great art, and today all great artlessness, must appear extreme to the mass of men, as we know them today. It springs from the anguish of great souls. From the souls of men not formed, but deformed in factories whose inspiration is pelf.

Trocchi, Alexander

38.

I will soon be going out to shape all the singing tomorrows.

Peri, Gabriel

39.

What is Art? It is the response of man's creative soul to the call of the Real.

Tagore, Rabindranath

40.

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

Churchill, Winston

41.

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

Pablo Picasso

42.

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

43.

It is not the size of a man but the size of his heart that matters.

Holyfield, Evander

44.

Good art however immoral is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise.

Pound, Ezra

45.

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

46.

Some people carry their heart in their head and some carry their head in their heart. The trick is to keep them apart yet working together.

Hare, David

47.

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

48.

When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art.

Chagall, Marc

49.

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

50.

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