Motivational Quotes

Art

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

Best Quotes about Art

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

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

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.

Walt Whitman

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

There is nothing enduring in life for a women except what she builds in a man's heart.

Anderson, Judith

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

Jackson Pollock

Feminist art is not some tiny creek running off the great river of real art. It is not some crack in an otherwise flawless stone. It is, quite spectacularly I think, art which is not based on the subjugation of one half of the species. It is art which will take the great human themes --love, death, heroism, suffering, history itself --and render them fully human. It may also, though perhaps our imaginations are so mutilated now that we are incapable even of the ambition, introduce a new theme, one as great and as rich as those others --should we call it joy?

Dworkin, Andrea

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

Cioran, E. M.

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

Miguel de Cervantes

10.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

11.

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

Klee, Paul

12.

Some people carry their heart in their head and some carry their head in their heart. The trick is to keep them apart yet working together.

Hare, David

13.

If I keep a green bough in my heart, the singing bird will come.

Proverb, Chinese

14.

I see little of more importance to the future of our country and of civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

Kennedy, John F.

15.

It's not your painting anymore. It stopped being your painting the moment that you finished it.

Jeff Melvoin

16.

It is time for us all to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever -- the one who recognizes the challenges and does something about it.

Lombardi, Vince

17.

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

Melville, Herman

18.

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

19.

Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.

G. K. Chesterton

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Ambrose Bierce

24.

It is not flesh and blood, but heart which makes us fathers and sons.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

25.

Life isn't long enough for love and art.

W. Somerset Maugham

26.

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

Camus, Albert

27.

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

Duke Ellington

28.

He bores me. He ought to have stuck to his flying machine. [On Leonardo Da Vinci]

Renoir, Pierre Auguste

29.

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

Cather, Willa

30.

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

31.

By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved.

Updike, John

32.

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

33.

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

West, Rebecca

34.

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.

Novalis

35.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

39.

The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.

Huxley, Aldous

40.

If you were in a burning house and there was a cat and a Rembrandt, what would you save? The cat...you would save the cat, because the cat is alive. The art is dead. It's just paint on a canvas, ink on a page. To live for art is to deny life. It's just to destroy life.

Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

41.

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

42.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

Pope, Alexander

43.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

44.

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

45.

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

Picasso, Pablo

46.

If that's art, I'm a Hottentot!

Truman, Harry S

47.

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

Jacob, Max

48.

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