Motivational Quotes

Art

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

Best Quotes about Art

As the twentieth century ends, commerce and culture are coming closer together. The distinction between life and art has been eroded by fifty years of enhanced communications, ever-improving reproduction technologies and increasing wealth.

Bayley, Stephen

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

G. K. Chesterton

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

Cioran, E. M.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

Pablo Picasso

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

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

Klee, Paul

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

Jacob, Max

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

Baryshnikov, Mikhail

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

Eliot, T. S.

10.

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.

11.

The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.

Piet Mondrian

12.

It is either easy or impossible.

Dali, Salvador

13.

The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn't make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it.

Stein, Gertrude

14.

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

15.

Life isn't long enough for love and art.

W. Somerset Maugham

16.

The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.

Nightingale, Florence

17.

The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.

Connolly, Cyril

18.

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

Kooning, Willem De

19.

Charity is in the heart of man, and righteousness in the path of men. Pity the man who has lost his path and does not follow it and who has lost his heart and does not know how to recover it. When people's dogs and chicks are lost they go out and look for them and yet the people who have lost their hearts do not go out and look for them. The principle of self-cultivation consists in nothing but trying to look for the lost heart.

Mencius (Mengzi Meng-tse)

20.

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

Kronenberger, Louis

21.

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

22.

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

23.

Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.

Sand, George

24.

Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

25.

I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.

Frida Kahlo

26.

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.

Novalis

27.

Don't waste time trying to break a man's heart; be satisfied if you can just manage to chip it in a brand new place.

Rowland, Helen

28.

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

Al Capp

29.

Art for art's sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orderly product which our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths, it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden... it is the best evidence we can have of our dignity.

Forster, Edward M.

30.

The head learns new things, but the heart forever practices old experiences.

Beecher, Henry Ward

31.

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

32.

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

33.

Not the glittering weapon fights the fight, but rather the hero's heart.

Proverb

34.

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood -- never.

Camus, Albert

35.

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

Proust, Marcel

36.

The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.

Connolly, Cyril

37.

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined; no sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet to chase the glowing hours with flying feet.

Gordon, George

38.

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

39.

Nothing right can be accomplished in art without enthusiasm.

Schumann, Robert

40.

Why should I buy expensive art when I can make my own.

Piero Milani

41.

The powerful play goes on -- and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

42.

Art is man's expression of his joy in labor.

Morris, William

43.

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

44.

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

Arp, Jean

45.

This grandiose tragedy that we call modern art.

Dali, Salvador

46.

If the Revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any tendency in art which, no matter how great its achievement in form, threatens to disintegrate the revolutionary environment or to arouse the internal forces of the Revolution, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, to a hostile opposition to one another. Our standard is, clearly, political, imperative and intolerant.

Trotsky, Leon

47.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.

Wilson, Robert

48.

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

Duke Ellington

49.

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

Paz, Octavio

50.

There is nothing enduring in life for a women except what she builds in a man's heart.