Motivational Quotes

Art

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.

- Murdoch, Iris

Best Quotes about Art

Artists are, above all, men who want to become inhuman.

Apollinaire, Guillaume

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

No human beings more dangerous than those who have suffered for a belief: the great persecutors are recruited from the martyrs not quite beheaded. Far from diminishing the appetite for power, suffering exasperates it.

Cioran, E. M.

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

Shakespeare, William

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

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Brancusi, Constantin

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.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul. The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of Artist.

Poe, Edgar Allan

10.

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

Woodberry, George E.

11.

Like other parties of the kind, it was first silent, then talky, then argumentative, then disputatious, then unintelligible, then altogether, then inarticulate, and then drunk. When we had reached the last step of this glorious ladder, it was difficult to get down again without stumbling.

Byron, Lord

12.

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

Anderson, Judith

13.

This is the artist, then, life's hungry man, the glutton of eternity, beauty's miser, glory's slave.

Wolfe, Thomas

14.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

15.

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

Jackson Pollock

16.

A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.

Edmond de Goncourt

17.

The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.

Geldzahler, Henry

18.

I will soon be going out to shape all the singing tomorrows.

Peri, Gabriel

19.

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

Kronenberger, Louis

20.

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

21.

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.

Pablo Picasso

22.

We are not here to triumph by fighting, by strata gem, or by resistance, not to fight with beasts as men. We have fought the beast and have conquered. We have only to conquer now,by suffering. This is the easier victory.

Eliot, T. S.

23.

Art at its most significant is a distant early warning system that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen.

Mcluhan, Marshall

24.

The creation of art is not the fulfillment of a need but the creation of a need. The world never needed Beethoven's Fifth Symphony until he created it. Now we could not live without it.

Louis I Kahn

25.

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

26.

Art, that great undogmatized church.

Key, Ellen

27.

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.

Murdoch, Iris

28.

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

29.

The way of the world is, to praise dead saints, and persecute living ones.

Howe, Nathaniel

30.

You cannot kindle a fire in any other heart until it is burning in your own.

31.

I can't work without a model. I won't say I turn my back on nature ruthlessly in order to turn a study into a picture, arranging the colors, enlarging and simplifying; but in the matter of form I am too afraid of departing from the possible and the true.

Gogh, Vincent Van

32.

What is art but a way of seeing?

Berger, Thomas

33.

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

34.

When I am finishing a picture I hold some God-made object up to it -- a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand -- as a kind of final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there's a clash between the two, it is bad art.

Chagall, Marc

35.

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

36.

The eyes see what the heart loves. If the heart loves God and is single in this devotion, then the eyes will see God whether others see Him or not.

Wiersbe, Warren

37.

The artist belongs to their work, not the work to the artist.

Novalis

38.

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

Frost, Robert

39.

The heart will break, but broken live on.

Byron, Lord

40.

While I do not suggest that humanity will ever be able to dispense with its martyrs, I cannot avoid the suspicion that with a little more thought and a little less belief their number may be substantially reduced.

Haldane, John B. S.

41.

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.

Matisse, Henri

42.

Art is the objectification of feeling.

Langer, Suzanne K.

43.

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

Joyce, James

44.

Art -- the one achievement of Man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised.

Thurber, James

45.

The art of creation is older than the art of killing.