Motivational Quotes

Art

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

Best Quotes about Art

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

Duke Ellington

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

Whether a party can have much success without a woman present I must ask others to decide, but one thing is certain, no party is any fun unless seasoned with folly.

Erasmus, Desiderius

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

Frost, Robert

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood -- never.

Camus, Albert

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

What I dream of is an art of balance.

Henri Matisse

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

Paul Gauguin

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

10.

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

11.

No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.

Ruskin, John

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Ginsberg, Allen

15.

This grandiose tragedy that we call modern art.

Dali, Salvador

16.

The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.

Klee, Paul

17.

If your heart were sincere and upright, every creature would be unto you a looking-glass of life and a book of holy doctrine.

Kempis, Thomas

18.

I suppose no matter what I'm drawing, there will always be some sort of question in my mind about it. A work of art (even cartoon art)is never really finished; it is abandoned.

Brooke McEldowney

19.

Fine art, that exists for itself alone, is art in a final state of impotence. If nobody, including the artist, acknowledges art as a means of knowing the world, then art is relegated to a kind of rumpus room of the mind and the irresponsibility of the artist and the irrelevance of art to actual living becomes part and parcel of the practice of art.

Carter, Angela

20.

The artist must conceive with warmth yet execute with coolness.

Winkelmann

21.

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

22.

I'm the artist formally known as Beck. I have a genius wig. When I put that wig on, then the true genius emerges. I don't have enough hair to be a genius. I think you have to have hair going everywhere.

Beck

23.

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

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De

24.

Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and far from commanding we are forced to obey it.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

25.

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

Woodberry, George E.

26.

The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.

Gide, Andre

27.

I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.

Frida Kahlo

28.

I am an artist I am here to live out loud.

Zola, Emile

29.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

30.

The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.

Berle, Adolf

31.

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

32.

The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs. Artists of a large and wholesome vitality get rid of their art easily, as they breathe easily or perspire easily. But in artists of less force, the thing becomes a pressure, and produces a definite pain, which is called the artistic temperament.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

33.

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

Castaneda, Carlos

34.

The brain can be easy to buy, but the heart never comes to market.

Lowell, James Russell

35.

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

36.

Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

37.

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

Tagore, Rabindranath

38.

Abstract Art: A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

Capp, Al

39.

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

Melville, Herman

40.

Repetition is the death of art.

Robin Green

41.

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

Schumann, Robert

42.

Whether joy or sorrowful, the heart needs a double, because a joy shared is doubled and a pain that is shared is divided.

Ruckett

43.

Let each man exercise the art he knows.

Aristophanes

44.

Miller, Henry

45.

The notion that the public accepts or rejects anything in modern art is merely romantic fiction. The game is completed and the trophies distributed long before the public knows what has happened.

Wolfe, Thomas

46.

Nothing right can be accomplished in art without enthusiasm.

Schumann, Robert

47.

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

M. C. Richards

48.

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

49.

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

50.

The object of art is to give life a shape. [Midsummer Nights Dream]

Shakespeare, William