Motivational Quotes

Art

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

- Novalis

Best Quotes about Art

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

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

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

Frye, Northrop

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.

In any society, the artist has a responsibility. His effectiveness is certainly limited and a painter or writer cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of non-conformity alive. Thanks to them the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts. That small difference is important.

Bunuel, Luis

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

Peri, Gabriel

Whatever an artist's personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical. He acts from or upon other artists.

Kooning, Willem De

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

Truman, Harry S

The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

Eliot, T. S.

10.

It is either easy or impossible.

Dali, Salvador

11.

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

12.

Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.

Twain, Mark

13.

Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.

Kael, Pauline

14.

Where are you searching for me, friend? Look! Here am I right within you. Not in temple, nor in mosque, not in Kaaba nor Kailas, but here right within you am I.

Kabir

15.

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

16.

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

Churchill, Winston

17.

It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance.

Midler, Bette

18.

What is art but life upon the larger scale, the higher. When, graduating up in a spiral line of still expanding and ascending gyres, it pushes toward the intense significance of all things, hungry for the infinite?

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

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.

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

21.

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.

Andre Gide

22.

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

Murdoch, Iris

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Cioran, E. M.

26.

Love can heal a broken heart.

27.

What of us lies in the hearts of others is our truest and deepest self.

Herder, Johann Gottfried Von

28.

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

Thurber, James

29.

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

Miguel de Cervantes

30.

What better way to prove that you understand a subject than to make money out of it?

Rosenberg, Harold

31.

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

Picasso, Pablo

32.

As noble Art has survived noble nature, so too she marches ahead of it, fashioning and awakening by her inspiration. Before Truth sends her triumphant light into the depths of the heart, imagination catches its rays, and the peaks of humanity will be glowing when humid night still lingers in the valleys.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

33.

If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently and replace it tenderly in its Master's presence. And even if you did nothing during the whole ofyour hour but bring your heart back and place it again in Our Lord's presence, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed.

Francis De Sales, St.

34.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

Pablo Picasso

35.

The heart will break, but broken live on.

Byron, Lord

36.

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

Eugene Delacroix

37.

The less you open your heart to others, the more your heart suffers.

Chopra, Deepak

38.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

39.

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

Jacob, Max

40.

Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.

Tynan, Kenneth

41.

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

42.

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

43.

Art need no longer be an account of past sensations. It can become the direct organization of more highly evolved sensations. It is a question of producing ourselves, not things that enslave us.

Debord, Guy

44.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

45.

I am as content to die for God's eternal truth on the scaffold as in any other way.

Brown, John Mason

46.

To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

47.

It is not the size of a man but the size of his heart that matters.

Holyfield, Evander

48.

Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

49.

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

Camus, Albert

50.

Whenever, at a party, I have been in the mood to study fools, I have always looked for a great beauty: they always gather round her like flies around a fruit stall.

Richter, Jean Paul