Motivational Quotes

Art

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

- Paul Gauguin

Best Quotes about Art

Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves they have a better idea.

Ciardi, John

One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honor or observation.

Scott, Sir Walter

By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved.

Updike, John

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

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

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

Capp, Al

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

Anderson, Judith

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

Eliot, T. S.

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

Wolfe, Thomas

10.

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

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.

Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

13.

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

Howe, Nathaniel

14.

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

Proust, Marcel

15.

The work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal.

Breton, Andre

16.

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

Diana, Princess of Wales

17.

Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of one's chosen form.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

18.

Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.

Twain, Mark

19.

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

Camus, Albert

20.

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

21.

It is the cause, not the death that makes the martyr.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

22.

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

Rosenberg, Harold

23.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

24.

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

25.

A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind.

Ionesco, Eugene

26.

All art is an imitation of nature.

Seneca

27.

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

28.

The heart that truly loves never forgets.

Proverb

29.

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

30.

Humanity is the rich effluvium, it is the waste and the manure and the soil, and from it grows the tree of the arts.

Pound, Ezra

31.

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

32.

Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

Einstein, Albert

33.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

34.

Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, cannot avoid cheating truth.

Riding, Laura

35.

Labor is the beginning, the middle, and the end of art.

36.

What we play is life.

Louis Armstrong

37.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

38.

The powerful play goes on -- and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

39.

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

40.

There are in every generation those who shrink from the ultimate sacrifice, but there are in every generation those who make it with joy and laughter and these are the salt of the generations.

Pearse, Patrick Henry

41.

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

Brown, John Mason

42.

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

43.

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

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

44.

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

Klee, Paul

45.

Art is so wonderfully irrational, exuberantly pointless, but necessary all the same. Pointless and yet necessary, that's hard for a puritan to understand.

Grass, Gunther

46.

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

47.

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

Thurber, James

48.

Those who write for lucre or fame are grosser than the cartel robbers, for they steal the genius of the people, which is its will to resist evil.

Dahlberg, Edward

49.

Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature.

Cicero

50.

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