Motivational Quotes

Art

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

- Piero Milani

Best Quotes about Art

Life isn't long enough for love and art.

W. Somerset Maugham

Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.

Rilke, Rainer Maria

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

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

Twentieth-century art may start with nothing, but it flourishes by virtue of its belief in itself, in the possibility of control over what seems essentially uncontrollable, in the coherence of the inchoate, and in its ability to create its own values.

Alvarez, A.

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

As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn't make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting -- the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.

Bellow, Saul

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

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

10.

Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.

W. Somerset Maugham

11.

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

12.

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

Peri, Gabriel

13.

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

14.

The arts are not just instantaneous pleasure -- if you don't like it, the artist is wrong. I belong to the generation which says if you don't like it, you don't understand and you ought to find out.

Drummond, John

15.

I am an artist I am here to live out loud.

Zola, Emile

16.

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

17.

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

Anderson, Bill

18.

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

Renoir, Pierre Auguste

19.

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

20.

Often while reading a book one feels that the author would have preferred to paint rather than write; one can sense the pleasure he derives from describing a landscape or a person, as if he were painting what he is saying, because deep in his heart he would have preferred to use brushes and colors.

Picasso, Pablo

21.

Not the glittering weapon fights the fight, but rather the hero's heart.

Proverb

22.

Seek not good from without: seek it within yourselves, or you will never find it.

Suttner, Bertha Von

23.

What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.

Paz, Octavio

24.

It isn't enough for your heart to break because everybody's heart is broken now.

Ginsberg, Allen

25.

Each painting has its own way of evolving...When the painting is finished, the subject reaveals itself.

William Baziotes

26.

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

Crowley, Aleister

27.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

28.

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.

E. M. Forster

29.

I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it -- on the inside.

30.

With an apple I will astonish Paris.

Cezanne, Paul

31.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

32.

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

Jacob, Max

33.

I suppose no matter what I'm drawing, there will always be some sort of question in my mind about it. A work of art (even cartoon art)is never really finished; it is abandoned.

Brooke McEldowney

34.

Within your heart, keep one still, secret spot where dreams may go.

Driscoll, Louise

35.

I can't tell you what art does and how it does it, but I know that often art has judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past suffered, so that it has never been forgotten. Art, when it functions like this, becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring, guts, and honor.

Berger, John

36.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

37.

We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.

John F. Kennedy

38.

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

39.

There is in every human heart Some not completely barren part, Where seeds of truth and love might grow, And flowers of generous virtue flow; To plant, to watch, to water there, This be our duty, be our care.

Bowring, Sir John

40.

Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation.

Davis, Angela Y.

41.

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

42.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.

Wilson, Robert

43.

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

44.

Is there not an art, a music, and a stream of words that shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life?

Wordsworth, William

45.

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

46.

As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.

Mencken, H. L.

47.

Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

48.

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

49.

There must be hearts which know the depths of our being, and swear by us, even when the whole world forsakes us.

Gutzkow

50.

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

Ambrose Bierce