Motivational Quotes

Art

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

Best Quotes about Art

Painting is an attempt to come to terms with life. There are as many solutions as there are human beings.

George Tooker

Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.

Latimer, Bishop Hugh

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

Truman, Harry S

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

Varese, Edward

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

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

Anderson, Bill

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

Proust, Marcel

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.

Waugh, Evelyn

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need. [when asked how he managed to make his remarkable statues.]

Rodin, Auguste

10.

I have joined my heart to thee: all that exists are thou. O Lord, beloved of my heart, thou art the home of all; where indeed is the heart in which thou dost not dwell?

Jafar

11.

Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors?

Edith Wharton

12.

Nature is inside art as its content, not outside as its model.

Frye, Northrop

13.

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

Frost, Robert

14.

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

15.

Art is the most passionate orgy within man's grasp.

Dubuffet, Jean

16.

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

Wolfe, Thomas

17.

Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.

Barenboim, Daniel

18.

Art distills sensations and embodies it with enhanced meaning.

Barzun, Jacques

19.

Experiment is necessary in establishing an academy, but certain principles must apply to this business of art as to any other business which affects the artistic tic sense of the community. Great art speaks a language which every intelligent person can understand. The people who call themselves modernists today speak a different language.

Menzies, Robert

20.

Let each man exercise the art he knows.

Aristophanes

21.

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

Murdoch, Iris

22.

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

23.

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

24.

It is a weakness that I lead from my heart, and not my head?

Diana, Princess of Wales

25.

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

26.

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

Gide, Andre

27.

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

G. K. Chesterton

28.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

29.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

30.

It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture.

31.

I do not know what the heart of a rascal may be, but I know what is in the heart of an honest man; it is horrible.

Maistre, Joseph De

32.

Why should I buy expensive art when I can make my own.

Piero Milani

33.

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

34.

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

Cioran, E. M.

35.

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

36.

Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers; to be, for a secular, materialist culture, some sort of replacement for what the love of god offers in the world of faith.

Rushdie, Salman

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

The focus should be on the players. I'm here a long time. You can call me in the summer. Our seniors will be gone.

Smith, Dean

41.

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

Pablo Picasso

42.

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

43.

Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.

Conrad, Joseph

44.

To write is to become disinterested. There is a certain renunciation in art.

Camus, Albert

45.

I don't believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there's one thing that's dangerous for an artist, it's precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.

Federico Fellini

46.

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

Cocteau, Jean

47.

Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.

Amy Lowell

48.

The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn't make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it.

Stein, Gertrude

49.

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.

Eugene Delacroix

50.

Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort.

Shaw, George Bernard