Motivational Quotes

Art

What I dream of is an art of balance.

- Henri Matisse

Best Quotes about Art

I do not know what the heart of a rascal may be, but I know what is in the heart of an honest man; it is horrible.

Maistre, Joseph De

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.

Eugene Delacroix

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

Piet Mondrian

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

What of us lies in the hearts of others is our truest and deepest self.

Herder, Johann Gottfried Von

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

Art is the only thing that can go on mattering, once it has stopped hurting.

Bowen, Elizabeth

By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved.

Updike, John

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.

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

Barney, Natalie Clifford

11.

Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort.

Shaw, George Bernard

12.

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

Rosenberg, Harold

13.

Art never improves, but the material of art is never quite the same.

Eliot, T. S.

14.

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

Henry Ward Beecher

15.

Art has never been made while thinking of art.

Niko Stumpo

16.

I never spend more than one hour in a gallery. That is as long as one's power of appreciation persists.

W. Somerset Maugham

17.

All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.

Eckhart, Meister

18.

Even if I died in the service of the nation, I would be proud of it. Every drop of my blood... will contribute to the growth of this nation and to make it strong and dynamic.

Gandhi, Indira

19.

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

20.

What I dream of is an art of balance.

Henri Matisse

21.

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

Yu Cao

22.

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

23.

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

Duke Ellington

24.

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

Ciardi, John

25.

There never was any heart truly great and generous, that was not also tender and compassionate.

Frost, Robert

26.

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

Wilson, Robert

27.

Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

Einstein, Albert

28.

A Great man is he who does not lose his childlike heart.

Mencius (Mengzi Meng-tse)

29.

I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

Orson Welles

30.

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

Blackie, Professor

31.

Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.

Latimer, Bishop Hugh

32.

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

33.

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

34.

Martyrdom does not end something, it only a beginning.

Gandhi, Indira

35.

Faint hearts never win fair ladies.

Proverb, Danish

36.

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

37.

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

Driscoll, Louise

38.

If the wolf had ever come to our back door, he'd have had to bring a picnic lunch.

Anderson, Bill

39.

Art is the most passionate orgy within man's grasp.

Dubuffet, Jean

40.

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

41.

No human beings more dangerous than those who have suffered for a belief: the great persecutors are recruited from the martyrs not quite beheaded. Far from diminishing the appetite for power, suffering exasperates it.

Cioran, E. M.

42.

The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.

Huxley, Aldous

43.

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

Howe, Nathaniel

44.

Wherever art appears, life disappears.

Picabia, Francis

45.

It's not your painting anymore. It stopped being your painting the moment that you finished it.

Jeff Melvoin

46.

Art is an absolute mistress; she will not be coquetted with or slighted; she requires the most entire self-devotion, and she repays with grand triumphs.

Cushman, Charlotte Saunders

47.

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

Joseph Chilton Pearce

48.

The torments of martyrdom are probably most keenly felt by the bystanders.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

49.

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

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