Motivational Quotes

Art

One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is when we see its separate forms jumbled together.

- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Best Quotes about Art

The notion that the public accepts or rejects anything in modern art is merely romantic fiction. The game is completed and the trophies distributed long before the public knows what has happened.

Wolfe, Thomas

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, while the heart of the fool is in the house of entertainment.

Bible

A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.

Edmond de Goncourt

What is art but a way of seeing?

Berger, Thomas

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

Art distills sensations and embodies it with enhanced meaning.

Barzun, Jacques

Only conservatives believe that subversion is still being carried on in the arts and that society is being shaken by it. Advanced art today is no longer a cause --it contains no moral imperative. There is no virtue in clinging to principles and standards, no vice in selling or in selling out.

Rosenberg, Harold

Each painting has its own way of evolving...When the painting is finished, the subject reaveals itself.

William Baziotes

Bad artists always admire each other's work. They call it being large-minded and free from prejudice. But a truly great artist cannot conceive of life being shown, or beauty fashioned, under any conditions other than those he has selected.

Wilde, Oscar

10.

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

11.

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

12.

All the arts we practice are apprenticeship. The big art is our life.

M. C. Richards

13.

Making social comment is an artificial place for an artist to start from. If an artist is touched by some social condition, what the artist creates will reflect that, but you can't force it.

Lewitzky, Bella

14.

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

15.

Each of the arts whose office is to refine, purify, adorn, embellish and grace life is under the patronage of a muse, no god being found worthy to preside over them.

Farnham, Eliza

16.

All paths are the same, leading nowhere. Therefore, pick a path with heart!

Castaneda, Carlos

17.

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

G. K. Chesterton

18.

Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere.

Apollinaire, Guillaume

19.

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

Cocteau, Jean

20.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

21.

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

22.

An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why.

Faulkner, William

23.

It is the cause, not the death that makes the martyr.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

24.

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

Burroughs, William S.

25.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

26.

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

Howe, Nathaniel

27.

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

Anderson, Judith

28.

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

Varese, Edward

29.

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

Anderson, Lindsay

30.

If we keep an open mind, too much is likely to fall into it.

Barney, Natalie Clifford

31.

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.

E. M. Forster

32.

It is impossible to give a clear account of the world, but art can teach us to reproduce it --just as the world reproduces itself in the course of its eternal gyrations. The primordial sea indefatigably repeats the same words and casts up the same astonished beings on the same sea-shore.

Camus, Albert

33.

To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

34.

Art -- the one achievement of Man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised.

Thurber, James

35.

I am more afraid of my own heart than the Pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great Pope, Self.

Luther, Martin

36.

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

37.

Nothing right can be accomplished in art without enthusiasm.

Schumann, Robert

38.

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

39.

Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it. Whoever has polished it more sees more -- more unseen forms become manifest to him.

Rumi, Jalal-Uddin

40.

Wealth and want equally harden the human heart, like frost and fire both are alien to human flesh.

Parker, Theodore

41.

In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent businessman.

Lewis, Sinclair

42.

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

Buckingham, Duke of

43.

Technology adds nothing to art. Two thousand years ago, I could tell you a story, and at any point during the story I could stop, and ask, Now do you want the hero to be kidnapped, or not? But that would, of course, have ruined the story. Part of the experience of being entertained is sitting back and plugging into someone else's vision.

Penn Jillette

44.

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need. [when asked how he managed to make his remarkable statues.]

Rodin, Auguste

45.

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

46.

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

47.

As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.

Mencken, H. L.

48.

Art need no longer be an account of past sensations. It can become the direct organization of more highly evolved sensations. It is a question of producing ourselves, not things that enslave us.

Debord, Guy

49.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.

Picasso, Pablo

50.

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.