Motivational Quotes

Art

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

- Mencius (Mengzi Meng-tse)

Best Quotes about Art

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

A painting in a museum probably hears more foolish remarks than anything else in the world.

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De

I shut my eyes in order to see.

Paul Gauguin

If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He's not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he's really needed.

Hockney, David

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

What is Art? It is the response of man's creative soul to the call of the Real.

Tagore, Rabindranath

Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature.

Rand, Ayn

Making social comment is an artificial place for an artist to start from. If an artist is touched by some social condition, what the artist creates will reflect that, but you can't force it.

Lewitzky, Bella

10.

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

Joseph Chilton Pearce

11.

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

John F. Kennedy

12.

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

13.

Have thy heart in heaven and thy hands upon the earth. Ascend in piety and descend in charity. For this is the Nature of Light and the way of the children.

Vaughan, Thomas

14.

Let each man exercise the art he knows.

Aristophanes

15.

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

Ambrose Bierce

16.

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.

Keller, Helen

17.

There is no true expertise in the humanities without knowing all of the humanities. Art is a vast, ancient interconnected web-work, a fabricated tradition. Over-concentration on any one point is a distortion.

Paglia, Camille

18.

I never spend more than one hour in a gallery. That is as long as one's power of appreciation persists.

W. Somerset Maugham

19.

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

20.

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

21.

Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere.

Apollinaire, Guillaume

22.

Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother's womb.

Arp, Jean

23.

A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.

Proust, Marcel

24.

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

Kronenberger, Louis

25.

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

26.

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

Ovid

27.

Art has an enemy called ignorance.

Johnson, Ben

28.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

29.

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

Driscoll, Louise

30.

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

Picasso, Pablo

31.

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

Paul Gauguin

32.

Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

33.

Every artist was first an amateur.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

34.

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

35.

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

Edith Wharton

36.

Their is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

37.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

38.

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

Cocteau, Jean

39.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.

Baldwin, James

40.

Contrary to popular belief an artist is never ahead of his time, but most people are far behind theirs.

Varese, Edward

41.

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

42.

Fortunately art is a community effort --a small but select community living in a spiritualized world endeavoring to interpret the wars and the solitudes of the flesh.

Ginsberg, Allen

43.

I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.

Ruskin, John

44.

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

45.

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

46.

If the wolf had ever come to our back door, he'd have had to bring a picnic lunch.

Anderson, Bill

47.

At every party there are two kinds of people -- those who want to go home and those who don't. The trouble is, they are usually married to each other.

Landers, Ann

48.

A heart in love with beauty never grows old.

Proverb, Turkish

49.

For us artists there waits the joyous compromise through art with all that wounded or defeated us in daily life; in this way, not to evade destiny, as the ordinary people try to do, but to fulfil it in its true potential --the imagination.

Durrell, Lawrence

50.

Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature.

Cicero