Motivational Quotes

Art

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

Best Quotes about Art

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.

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

What is art but life upon the larger scale, the higher. When, graduating up in a spiral line of still expanding and ascending gyres, it pushes toward the intense significance of all things, hungry for the infinite?

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

I am as content to die for God's eternal truth on the scaffold as in any other way.

Brown, John Mason

Their is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.

Blackie, Professor

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

I'm the artist formally known as Beck. I have a genius wig. When I put that wig on, then the true genius emerges. I don't have enough hair to be a genius. I think you have to have hair going everywhere.

Beck

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

10.

Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

11.

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

Gutzkow

12.

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

Camus, Albert

13.

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

Joseph Chilton Pearce

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Eliot, T. S.

18.

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

Wilson, Robert

19.

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

Morris, William

20.

The creative artist seems to be almost the only kind of man that you could never meet on neutral ground. You can only meet him as an artist. He sees nothing objectively because his own ego is always in the foreground of every picture.

Chandler, Raymond

21.

The creation of art is not the fulfillment of a need but the creation of a need. The world never needed Beethoven's Fifth Symphony until he created it. Now we could not live without it.

Louis I Kahn

22.

It isn't enough for your heart to break because everybody's heart is broken now.

Ginsberg, Allen

23.

The True Artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

24.

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

25.

All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.

Eckhart, Meister

26.

If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He's not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he's really needed.

Hockney, David

27.

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

28.

The heart is the best reflective thinker.

Phillips, Wendell

29.

There are in every generation those who shrink from the ultimate sacrifice, but there are in every generation those who make it with joy and laughter and these are the salt of the generations.

Pearse, Patrick Henry

30.

Doubt obscures the true vision of the heart.

31.

If I keep a green bough in my heart, the singing bird will come.

Proverb, Chinese

32.

I have joined my heart to thee: all that exists are thou. O Lord, beloved of my heart, thou art the home of all; where indeed is the heart in which thou dost not dwell?

Jafar

33.

The function of art is to make that understood which in the form of argument would be incomprehensible.

Brancusi, Constantin

34.

The eyes see what the heart loves. If the heart loves God and is single in this devotion, then the eyes will see God whether others see Him or not.

Wiersbe, Warren

35.

Pictures deface walls more often than they decorate them.

Wright, Frank Lloyd

36.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

37.

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

38.

Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

Cather, Willa

39.

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

40.

It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture.

41.

Art forms of the past were really considered elitist. Bach did not compose for the masses, neither did Beethoven. It was always for patrons, aristocrats, and royalty. Now we have a sort of democratic version of that, which is to say that the audience is so splintered in its interests.

David Cronenberg

42.

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

Crowley, Aleister

43.

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

Henry Ward Beecher

44.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

Pablo Picasso

45.

Fine art, that exists for itself alone, is art in a final state of impotence. If nobody, including the artist, acknowledges art as a means of knowing the world, then art is relegated to a kind of rumpus room of the mind and the irresponsibility of the artist and the irrelevance of art to actual living becomes part and parcel of the practice of art.

Carter, Angela

46.

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving. A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants.

Lao-Tzu

47.

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

William Baziotes

48.

A heart in love with beauty never grows old.

Proverb, Turkish

49.

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

50.

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