Motivational Quotes

Art

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

- Howe, Nathaniel

Best Quotes about Art

Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.

Miller, Henry

The difference between a man who faces death for the sake of an idea and an imitator who goes in search of martyrdom is that whilst the former expresses his idea most fully in death it is the strange feeling of bitterness which comes from failure that the latter really enjoys; the former rejoices in his victory, the latter in his suffering.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.

Barenboim, Daniel

As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn't make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting -- the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.

Bellow, Saul

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

Buckingham, Duke of

You're confusing product with process. Most people, when they criticize, whether they like it or hate it, they're talking about product. That's not art, that's the result of art. Art, to whatever degree we can get a handle on (I'm not sure that we really can) is a process. It begins in the heart and the mind with the eyes and hands.

Jeff Melvoin

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature.

Rand, Ayn

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

Jacob, Max

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

10.

Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

11.

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

12.

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

Ginsberg, Allen

13.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

14.

All art is an imitation of nature.

Seneca

15.

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

16.

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

Gutzkow

17.

Art has never been made while thinking of art.

Niko Stumpo

18.

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting with the gift of speech.

Simonides

19.

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

Anderson, Bill

20.

I say that good painters imitated nature; but that bad ones vomited it.

Miguel de Cervantes

21.

Abstract Art: A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

Capp, Al

22.

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist's way of scribbling Kilroy was here on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.

Faulkner, William

23.

Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors?

Edith Wharton

24.

Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end.

Joyce, James

25.

Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and far from commanding we are forced to obey it.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

26.

The focus should be on the players. I'm here a long time. You can call me in the summer. Our seniors will be gone.

Smith, Dean

27.

Nature is inside art as its content, not outside as its model.

Frye, Northrop

28.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

29.

What is Art? It is the response of man's creative soul to the call of the Real.

Tagore, Rabindranath

30.

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

Piet Mondrian

31.

Modern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at. At least, some of them are. But they are quite impossible to live with; they are too clever, too assertive, too intellectual. Their meaning is too obvious, and their method too clearly defined. One

Wilde, Oscar

32.

What we play is life.

Louis Armstrong

33.

Art is permitted to survive only if it renounces the right to be different, and integrates itself into the omnipotent realm of the profane.

Adorno, Theodor W.

34.

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

Midler, Bette

35.

Follow your heart, but be quiet for a while first. Ask questions, then feel the answer. Learn to trust your heart.

36.

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

Gide, Andre

37.

Through art we express our conception of what nature is not.

Picasso, Pablo

38.

Art is too serious to be taken seriously.

Reinhardt, Ad

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Morris, William

42.

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

Camus, Albert

43.

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

44.

Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me leave to do my utmost.

Isak Dineson

45.

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

Einstein, Albert

46.

A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment.

Trilling, Lionel

47.

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

Brancusi, Constantin

48.

The art of creation is older than the art of killing.

Voznesensky, Andrei

49.

Experiment is necessary in establishing an academy, but certain principles must apply to this business of art as to any other business which affects the artistic tic sense of the community. Great art speaks a language which every intelligent person can understand. The people who call themselves modernists today speak a different language.

Menzies, Robert

50.

The artist is the child of his time; but woe to him if he is also its disciple, or even its favorite.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von