Motivational Quotes

Art

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

Best Quotes about Art

Art is the objectification of feeling.

Langer, Suzanne K.

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

Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing --to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of Caesar, or an oration. Presently we return to the sight of another that globes itself into a whole as did the first, for example, a beautiful garden; and nothing seems worth doing in life but laying out a garden.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me leave to do my utmost.

Isak Dineson

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

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

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

Driscoll, Louise

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, while the heart of the fool is in the house of entertainment.

Bible

10.

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

11.

Poe, Edgar Allan

12.

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

Brancusi, Constantin

13.

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

Varese, Edward

14.

Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity, never of the correctness of a belief.

Schnitzler, Arthur

15.

If we keep an open mind, too much is likely to fall into it.

Barney, Natalie Clifford

16.

Use your head and your heart, its not everything but its a start.

17.

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

Waugh, Evelyn

18.

Modern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at. At least, some of them are. But they are quite impossible to live with; they are too clever, too assertive, too intellectual. Their meaning is too obvious, and their method too clearly defined. One

Wilde, Oscar

19.

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

20.

Art has an enemy called ignorance.

Johnson, Ben

21.

Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.

Godard, Jean-Luc

22.

I see little of more importance to the future of our country and of civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

Kennedy, John F.

23.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

24.

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

25.

I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

Orson Welles

26.

Wherever art appears, life disappears.

Picabia, Francis

27.

Two things are bad for the heart -- running up stairs and running down people.

Baruch, Bernard M.

28.

Art distills sensations and embodies it with enhanced meaning.

Barzun, Jacques

29.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

30.

Faint hearts never win fair ladies.

Proverb, Danish

31.

But the one thing you should. not do is to suppose that when something is wrong with the arts, it is wrong with the arts ONLY.

Pound, Ezra

32.

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

33.

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

Proust, Marcel

34.

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

Frye, Northrop

35.

The artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business.

Berryman, John

36.

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

37.

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

Rosenberg, Harold

38.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

39.

Art is skill, that is the first meaning of the word.

Gill, Eric

40.

All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.

Eckhart, Meister

41.

Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.

West, Rebecca

42.

Art forms of the past were really considered elitist. Bach did not compose for the masses, neither did Beethoven. It was always for patrons, aristocrats, and royalty. Now we have a sort of democratic version of that, which is to say that the audience is so splintered in its interests.

David Cronenberg

43.

What is Art? It is the response of man's creative soul to the call of the Real.

Tagore, Rabindranath

44.

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

45.

Look at every path closely and deliberately, then ask ourselves this crucial question: Does this path have a heart? If it does, then the path is good. If it doesn't, it is of no use.

Castaneda, Carlos

46.

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

47.

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

Cioran, E. M.

48.

What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.

Ruskin, John

49.

The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.

Berle, Adolf

50.

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