Motivational Quotes

Art

In free society art is not a weapon. Artists are not engineers of the soul.

- Kennedy, John F.

Best Quotes about Art

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

Blackie, Professor

All great art, and today all great artlessness, must appear extreme to the mass of men, as we know them today. It springs from the anguish of great souls. From the souls of men not formed, but deformed in factories whose inspiration is pelf.

Trocchi, Alexander

Repetition is the death of art.

Robin Green

All art is an imitation of nature.

Seneca

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

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to the feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.

Gogh, Vincent Van

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

Eugene Delacroix

I don't believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there's one thing that's dangerous for an artist, it's precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.

Federico Fellini

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

10.

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

Churchill, Winston

11.

Not the glittering weapon fights the fight, but rather the hero's heart.

Proverb

12.

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

Weil, Simone

13.

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

Crowley, Aleister

14.

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

Dubuffet, Jean

15.

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

Mencius (Mengzi Meng-tse)

16.

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

Frost, Robert

17.

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

William Baziotes

18.

No sheath shall hold what finds its home in flesh.

Proverb

19.

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

20.

Look at every path closely and deliberately, then ask ourselves this crucial question: Does this path have a heart? If it does, then the path is good. If it doesn't, it is of no use.

Castaneda, Carlos

21.

Charity is in the heart of man, and righteousness in the path of men. Pity the man who has lost his path and does not follow it and who has lost his heart and does not know how to recover it. When people's dogs and chicks are lost they go out and look for them and yet the people who have lost their hearts do not go out and look for them. The principle of self-cultivation consists in nothing but trying to look for the lost heart.

Mencius (Mengzi Meng-tse)

22.

Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing --to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of Caesar, or an oration. Presently we return to the sight of another that globes itself into a whole as did the first, for example, a beautiful garden; and nothing seems worth doing in life but laying out a garden.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

23.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

24.

There is nothing enduring in life for a women except what she builds in a man's heart.

Anderson, Judith

25.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

26.

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need. [when asked how he managed to make his remarkable statues.]

Rodin, Auguste

27.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

Pablo Picasso

28.

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

Piero Milani

29.

Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.

Godard, Jean-Luc

30.

An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why.

Faulkner, William

31.

Art is skill, that is the first meaning of the word.

Gill, Eric

32.

Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

33.

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

34.

Art is so wonderfully irrational, exuberantly pointless, but necessary all the same. Pointless and yet necessary, that's hard for a puritan to understand.

Grass, Gunther

35.

Pictures deface walls more often than they decorate them.

Wright, Frank Lloyd

36.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

37.

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

David Cronenberg

38.

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

Ginsberg, Allen

39.

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

Castaneda, Carlos

40.

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

Ionesco, Eugene

41.

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

Frye, Northrop

42.

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

Mann, Horace

43.

We are not here to triumph by fighting, by strata gem, or by resistance, not to fight with beasts as men. We have fought the beast and have conquered. We have only to conquer now,by suffering. This is the easier victory.

Eliot, T. S.

44.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

45.

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

Connolly, Cyril

46.

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

Truman, Harry S

47.

As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.