Motivational Quotes

Art

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

- Jeff Melvoin

Best Quotes about Art

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

It is either easy or impossible.

Dali, Salvador

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

Brown, John Mason

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

Wilson, Robert

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.

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

Waugh, Evelyn

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

I will soon be going out to shape all the singing tomorrows.

Peri, Gabriel

Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

10.

Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.

Weil, Simone

11.

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

12.

There is no true expertise in the humanities without knowing all of the humanities. Art is a vast, ancient interconnected web-work, a fabricated tradition. Over-concentration on any one point is a distortion.

Paglia, Camille

13.

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

Cassady, Neal

14.

Why should I buy expensive art when I can make my own.

Piero Milani

15.

Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.

Sand, George

16.

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.

Novalis

17.

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

West, Rebecca

18.

The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart.

Schumann, Robert

19.

The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.

Connolly, Cyril

20.

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

21.

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

22.

If that's art, I'm a Hottentot!

Truman, Harry S

23.

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

24.

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

Parker, Theodore

25.

The idea of a mass audience was really an invention of the Industrial Revolution.

David Cronenberg

26.

Art distills sensations and embodies it with enhanced meaning.

Barzun, Jacques

27.

It is not in life, but in art that self-fulfillment is to be found.

Woodberry, George E.

28.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

29.

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

30.

With an apple I will astonish Paris.

Cezanne, Paul

31.

The work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal.

Breton, Andre

32.

Photography, fortunately, to me has not only been a profession but also a contact between people - to understand human nature and record, if possible, the best in each individual.

Nickolas Muray

33.

Whether joy or sorrowful, the heart needs a double, because a joy shared is doubled and a pain that is shared is divided.

Ruckett

34.

O, had I but followed the arts!

Shakespeare, William

35.

No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.

Ruskin, John

36.

What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

Jefferson, Thomas

37.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

38.

Some people carry their heart in their head and some carry their head in their heart. The trick is to keep them apart yet working together.

Hare, David

39.

You cannot kindle a fire in any other heart until it is burning in your own.

40.

Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.

W. Somerset Maugham

41.

I see little of more importance to the future of our country and of civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

Kennedy, John F.

42.

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

Varese, Edward

43.

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

William Baziotes

44.

No sheath shall hold what finds its home in flesh.

Proverb

45.

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