Motivational Quotes

Art

In our own hearts, we mold the whole world's hereafters; and in our own hearts we fashion our own gods.

- Melville, Herman

Best Quotes about Art

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

There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.

Pablo Picasso

Life isn't long enough for love and art.

W. Somerset Maugham

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

Shakespeare, William

Nothing right can be accomplished in art without enthusiasm.

Schumann, Robert

Each of the arts whose office is to refine, purify, adorn, embellish and grace life is under the patronage of a muse, no god being found worthy to preside over them.

Farnham, Eliza

The heart always sees before than the head can see.

Carlyle, Thomas

Painting is an attempt to come to terms with life. There are as many solutions as there are human beings.

George Tooker

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

10.

There is in every human heart Some not completely barren part, Where seeds of truth and love might grow, And flowers of generous virtue flow; To plant, to watch, to water there, This be our duty, be our care.

Bowring, Sir John

11.

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

12.

When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art.

Chagall, Marc

13.

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

14.

Seek not good from without: seek it within yourselves, or you will never find it.

Suttner, Bertha Von

15.

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

Kennedy, John F.

16.

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

17.

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

18.

Artists must be sacrificed to their art.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

19.

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

Cassady, Neal

20.

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

21.

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

22.

No sheath shall hold what finds its home in flesh.

Proverb

23.

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

William Baziotes

24.

An artist is forced by others to paint out of his own free will.

Kooning, Willem De

25.

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

Parker, Dorothy

26.

I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for religion --I have shuddered at it. I shudder no more --I could be martyred for my religion --Love is my religion --I could die for that.

Keats, John

27.

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

Duke Ellington

28.

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

29.

Good art however immoral is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise.

Pound, Ezra

30.

If we keep an open mind, too much is likely to fall into it.

Barney, Natalie Clifford

31.

We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.

John F. Kennedy

32.

The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.

Nightingale, Florence

33.

The heart is the best reflective thinker.

Phillips, Wendell

34.

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

35.

Those who write for lucre or fame are grosser than the cartel robbers, for they steal the genius of the people, which is its will to resist evil.

Dahlberg, Edward

36.

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

John Singer Sargent

37.

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

Baruch, Bernard M.

38.

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

39.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

40.

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

Gill, Eric

41.

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

42.

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

43.

Where are you searching for me, friend? Look! Here am I right within you. Not in temple, nor in mosque, not in Kaaba nor Kailas, but here right within you am I.

Kabir

44.

I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none.

Ben Shahn

45.

Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.

Twain, Mark

46.

Doubt obscures the true vision of the heart.

47.

The vitality of a new movement in Art must be gauged by the fury it arouses.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

48.

In order for the artist to have a world to express he must first be situated in this world, oppressed or oppressing, resigned or rebellious, a man among men.

Beauvoir, Simone De

49.

Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off.

Cioran, E. M.

50.

Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.

Edith Wharton