Motivational Quotes

Art

What I dream of is an art of balance.

- Henri Matisse

Best Quotes about Art

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

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

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

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

Barney, Natalie Clifford

It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance.

Midler, Bette

Painting: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.

Ambrose Bierce

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

Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves they have a better idea.

Ciardi, John

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.

10.

What better way to prove that you understand a subject than to make money out of it?

Rosenberg, Harold

11.

I'm still an artist. I'm never gonna do a shit movie, because I've got my modeling to support me.

Jovovich, Milla

12.

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.

Waugh, Evelyn

13.

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

14.

All art is an imitation of nature.

Seneca

15.

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

16.

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

17.

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.

Alfred North Whitehead

18.

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

Wilson, Robert

19.

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

20.

It is more difficult, and it calls for higher energies of soul, to live a martyr than to die one.

Mann, Horace

21.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

22.

The great artist is a slave to his ideals.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

23.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

24.

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

Paz, Octavio

25.

Art is good when it springs from necessity. This kind of origin is the guarantee of its value; there is no other.

Cassady, Neal

26.

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

Buckingham, Duke of

27.

Faint hearts never win fair ladies.

Proverb, Danish

28.

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

Klee, Paul

29.

The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs. Artists of a large and wholesome vitality get rid of their art easily, as they breathe easily or perspire easily. But in artists of less force, the thing becomes a pressure, and produces a definite pain, which is called the artistic temperament.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

30.

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

Proverb, Chinese

31.

There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.

Pablo Picasso

32.

A heart in love with beauty never grows old.

Proverb, Turkish

33.

A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind.

Ionesco, Eugene

34.

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

Varese, Edward

35.

Let each man exercise the art he knows.

Aristophanes

36.

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

Duke Ellington

37.

I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.

Ruskin, John

38.

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

M. C. Richards

39.

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

Cocteau, Jean

40.

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

41.

The heart that truly loves never forgets.

Proverb

42.

While I do not suggest that humanity will ever be able to dispense with its martyrs, I cannot avoid the suspicion that with a little more thought and a little less belief their number may be substantially reduced.

Haldane, John B. S.

43.

Within your heart, keep one still, secret spot where dreams may go.

Driscoll, Louise

44.

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

Novalis

45.

I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none.

Ben Shahn

46.

The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.

Gide, Andre

47.

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

Kronenberger, Louis

48.

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

Shaw, George Bernard

49.

Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.

West, Rebecca

50.

The arts are not just instantaneous pleasure -- if you don't like it, the artist is wrong. I belong to the generation which says if you don't like it, you don't understand and you ought to find out.

Drummond, John