Motivational Quotes

Art

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

- Mencius (Mengzi Meng-tse)

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.

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

As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn't make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting -- the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.

Bellow, Saul

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

As the twentieth century ends, commerce and culture are coming closer together. The distinction between life and art has been eroded by fifty years of enhanced communications, ever-improving reproduction technologies and increasing wealth.

Bayley, Stephen

If I didn't start painting, I would have raised chickens.

Moses, Grandma

In art as in love, instinct is enough.

France, Anatole

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

Schumann, Robert

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

Cioran, E. M.

10.

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

11.

In art there are tears that lie too deep for thought.

Kronenberger, Louis

12.

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

13.

In art, one idea is as good as another. If one takes the idea of trembling, for instance, all of a sudden most art starts to tremble. Michelangelo starts to tremble. El Greco starts to tremble. All the Impressionists start to tremble.

Kooning, Willem De

14.

The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.

Jackson Pollock

15.

All the arts we practice are apprenticeship. The big art is our life.

M. C. Richards

16.

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

17.

The artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business.

Berryman, John

18.

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

Woodberry, George E.

19.

The function of art is to make that understood which in the form of argument would be incomprehensible.

Brancusi, Constantin

20.

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

Cather, Willa

21.

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, while the heart of the fool is in the house of entertainment.

Bible

22.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

Pablo Picasso

23.

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

24.

Follow your heart, but be quiet for a while first. Ask questions, then feel the answer. Learn to trust your heart.

25.

Art is an absolute mistress; she will not be coquetted with or slighted; she requires the most entire self-devotion, and she repays with grand triumphs.

Cushman, Charlotte Saunders

26.

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

27.

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

Kennedy, John F.

28.

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

Brown, John Mason

29.

The arts are not just instantaneous pleasure -- if you don't like it, the artist is wrong. I belong to the generation which says if you don't like it, you don't understand and you ought to find out.

Drummond, John

30.

Through art we express our conception of what nature is not.

Picasso, Pablo

31.

The head learns new things, but the heart forever practices old experiences.

Beecher, Henry Ward

32.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

33.

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving. A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants.

Lao-Tzu

34.

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

Ben Shahn

35.

If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently and replace it tenderly in its Master's presence. And even if you did nothing during the whole ofyour hour but bring your heart back and place it again in Our Lord's presence, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed.

Francis De Sales, St.

36.

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

John F. Kennedy

37.

Had we never lov'd sae kindly, Had we never lov'd sae blindly, Never met -- or never parted -- we had never been broken-hearted.

Burns, Robert

38.

It is all very well, when the pen flows, but then there are the dark days when imagination deserts one, and it is an effort to put anything down on paper. That little you have achieved stares at you at the end of the day, and you know the next morning you will have to scrape it down and start again.

Elizabeth Aston

39.

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

40.

Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end.

Joyce, James

41.

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

Crowley, Aleister

42.

It is not the size of a man but the size of his heart that matters.

Holyfield, Evander

43.

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.

Novalis

44.

I would rather be ashes than dust. I would rather that my spark would burn out in a brilliant blaze than be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

London, Jack

45.

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

Wilson, Robert

46.

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

Proverb

47.

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

Ward Jenkins

48.

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

David Cronenberg

49.

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

50.

It is the cause, not the death that makes the martyr.

Bonaparte, Napoleon