Motivational Quotes

Art

Every artist was first an amateur.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Best Quotes about Art

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

The creation of art is not the fulfillment of a need but the creation of a need. The world never needed Beethoven's Fifth Symphony until he created it. Now we could not live without it.

Louis I Kahn

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

Ruskin, John

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

Jacob, Max

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

Barney, Natalie Clifford

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

A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.

Edmond de Goncourt

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

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

Art is too serious to be taken seriously.

Reinhardt, Ad

10.

When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art.

Chagall, Marc

11.

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

12.

Even if I died in the service of the nation, I would be proud of it. Every drop of my blood... will contribute to the growth of this nation and to make it strong and dynamic.

Gandhi, Indira

13.

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

Eugene Delacroix

14.

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

Stephen Nachmanovitch

15.

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

Wilson, Robert

16.

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

Suttner, Bertha Von

17.

There is only one art, whose sole criterion is the power, the authenticity, the revelatory insight, the courage and suggestiveness with which it seeks its truth. Thus, from the standpoint of the work and its worth it is irrelevant to which political ideas the artist as a citizen claims allegiance, which ideas he would like to serve with his work or whether he holds any such ideas at all.

Havel, Vaclav

18.

A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.

Baudelaire, Charles

19.

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.

20.

Every artist writes his own autobiography.

Ellis, Havelock

21.

At every party there are two kinds of people -- those who want to go home and those who don't. The trouble is, they are usually married to each other.

Landers, Ann

22.

The artist is the opposite of the politically minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. The artist does not tinker with the universe; he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life.

Miller, Henry

23.

Impartial. Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.

Bierce, Ambrose

24.

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

25.

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

26.

Love can heal a broken heart.

27.

While I do not suggest that humanity will ever be able to dispense with its martyrs, I cannot avoid the suspicion that with a little more thought and a little less belief their number may be substantially reduced.

Haldane, John B. S.

28.

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

Paul Gauguin

29.

I am more afraid of my own heart than the Pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great Pope, Self.

Luther, Martin

30.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

31.

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

32.

The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.

Huxley, Aldous

33.

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

Brown, John Mason

34.

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

35.

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

36.

Had we never lov'd sae kindly, Had we never lov'd sae blindly, Never met -- or never parted -- we had never been broken-hearted.

Burns, Robert

37.

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

Tagore, Rabindranath

38.

There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause.

Zedong, Mao

39.

Art imitates Nature in this; not to dare is to dwindle.

Updike, John

40.

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

41.

It is either easy or impossible.

Dali, Salvador

42.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

43.

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

44.

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

Capp, Al

45.

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

Herder, Johann Gottfried Von

46.

I know just how frustrating it can be when you're tired and exhausted, but you still want to draw something.

Ward Jenkins

47.

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

48.

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined; no sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet to chase the glowing hours with flying feet.

Gordon, George

49.

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

50.

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

Crowley, Aleister