Motivational Quotes

Art

Thou art my glory and the exultation of y heart: thou art my hope and refuge in the day of my trouble.

- Kempis, Thomas

Best Quotes about Art

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

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

Driscoll, Louise

If I spit, they will take my spit and frame it as great art.

Picasso, Pablo

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

Cocteau, Jean

The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.

Berle, Adolf

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.

Burroughs, William S.

The notion that the public accepts or rejects anything in modern art is merely romantic fiction. The game is completed and the trophies distributed long before the public knows what has happened.

Wolfe, Thomas

Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.

Cather, Willa

10.

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

11.

O, had I but followed the arts!

Shakespeare, William

12.

The heart always sees before than the head can see.

Carlyle, Thomas

13.

The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.

Geldzahler, Henry

14.

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

15.

There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause.

Zedong, Mao

16.

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

17.

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.

Novalis

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

Miller, Henry

21.

Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.

Amy Lowell

22.

One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honor or observation.

Scott, Sir Walter

23.

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

24.

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

25.

Often while reading a book one feels that the author would have preferred to paint rather than write; one can sense the pleasure he derives from describing a landscape or a person, as if he were painting what he is saying, because deep in his heart he would have preferred to use brushes and colors.

Picasso, Pablo

26.

All paths are the same, leading nowhere. Therefore, pick a path with heart!

Castaneda, Carlos

27.

Whenever, at a party, I have been in the mood to study fools, I have always looked for a great beauty: they always gather round her like flies around a fruit stall.

Richter, Jean Paul

28.

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

29.

Impartial. Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.

Bierce, Ambrose

30.

Drink, and dance and laugh and lie, love the reeling midnight through, for tomorrow we shall die! (But, alas, we never do.)

Parker, Dorothy

31.

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

Anderson, Lindsay

32.

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

33.

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

34.

Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what, formerly, we could not bear to see or hear, because it was too shocking, painful, or embarrassing, art changes morals.

Sontag, Susan

35.

He bores me. He ought to have stuck to his flying machine. [On Leonardo Da Vinci]

Renoir, Pierre Auguste

36.

No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true.

Wilde, Oscar

37.

Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers; to be, for a secular, materialist culture, some sort of replacement for what the love of god offers in the world of faith.

Rushdie, Salman

38.

I will greet this day with love in my heart. For this is the greatest secret of success in all ventures. Muscles can split a shield and even destroy life itself but only the unseen power of love can open the hearts of man. And until I master this act I will remain no more than a peddler in the marketplace. I will make love my greatest weapon and none on who I call can defend upon its force... my love will melt all hearts liken to the sun whose rays soften the coldest day.

Mandino, Og

39.

Art is the objectification of feeling.

Langer, Suzanne K.

40.

I know just how frustrating it can be when you're tired and exhausted, but you still want to draw something.

Ward Jenkins

41.

Martyrdom does not end something, it only a beginning.

Gandhi, Indira

42.

What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted. [Henry Iv]

Shakespeare, William

43.

Many bad artists will tell you that art is life. There's a subtle difference however. You can turn your back on art

44.

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

Connolly, Cyril

45.

Art has an enemy called ignorance.

Johnson, Ben

46.

Enjoyed it! One more drink and I'd have been under the host.

Parker, Dorothy

47.

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

Voznesensky, Andrei

48.

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

Joseph Chilton Pearce

49.

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

50.

The artist is the opposite of the politically minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. The artist does not tinker with the universe; he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life.

Miller, Henry