Motivational Quotes

Art

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

Best Quotes about Art

Art for art's sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orderly product which our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths, it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden... it is the best evidence we can have of our dignity.

Forster, Edward M.

I shut my eyes in order to see.

Paul Gauguin

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

Miguel de Cervantes

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

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

Blackie, Professor

Kierkegaard, S°ren

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

Shaw, George Bernard

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

Jacob, Max

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

West, Rebecca

10.

Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity, never of the correctness of a belief.

Schnitzler, Arthur

11.

But the one thing you should. not do is to suppose that when something is wrong with the arts, it is wrong with the arts ONLY.

Pound, Ezra

12.

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

13.

I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it -- on the inside.

14.

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

William Baziotes

15.

Art is the objectification of feeling.

Langer, Suzanne K.

16.

Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that you live, if you do.

Elizabeth Bowen

17.

As noble Art has survived noble nature, so too she marches ahead of it, fashioning and awakening by her inspiration. Before Truth sends her triumphant light into the depths of the heart, imagination catches its rays, and the peaks of humanity will be glowing when humid night still lingers in the valleys.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

18.

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

19.

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

Proverb

20.

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

Mencius (Mengzi Meng-tse)

21.

Painting: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.

Ambrose Bierce

22.

Whether you call my heart affectionate, or you call it womanish: I confess, that to my misfortune, it is soft.

Ovid

23.

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

Eliot, T. S.

24.

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

25.

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

Rosenberg, Harold

26.

The more a man cultivates the arts the less he fornicates. A more and more apparent cleavage occurs between the spirit and the brute.

Baudelaire, Charles

27.

Two things are bad for the heart -- running up stairs and running down people.

Baruch, Bernard M.

28.

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

David Cronenberg

29.

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

30.

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

31.

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.

Matisse, Henri

32.

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

Buckingham, Duke of

33.

Use your head and your heart, its not everything but its a start.

34.

The creation of art is not the fulfillment of a need but the creation of a need. The world never needed Beethoven's Fifth Symphony until he created it. Now we could not live without it.

Louis I Kahn

35.

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

36.

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

Parker, Dorothy

37.

Art is a form of catharsis.

Parker, Dorothy

38.

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

39.

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

40.

Artists must be sacrificed to their art.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

41.

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

Schumann, Robert

42.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

43.

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

Ciardi, John

44.

Inside you there's an artist you don't know about. He's not interested in how things look different in moonlight.

Rumi, Jalal-Uddin

45.

The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart.

Franklin, Benjamin

46.

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

47.

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

Frost, Robert

48.

Technology adds nothing to art. Two thousand years ago, I could tell you a story, and at any point during the story I could stop, and ask, Now do you want the hero to be kidnapped, or not? But that would, of course, have ruined the story. Part of the experience of being entertained is sitting back and plugging into someone else's vision.

Penn Jillette

49.

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.

50.

Art has never been made while thinking of art.

Niko Stumpo