Motivational Quotes

Art

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

- Renoir, Pierre Auguste

Best Quotes about Art

Art is the most passionate orgy within man's grasp.

Dubuffet, Jean

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

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

John Singer Sargent

Inside you there's an artist you don't know about. He's not interested in how things look different in moonlight.

Rumi, Jalal-Uddin

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

Wordsworth, William

For the outer sense alone perceives visible things and the eye of the heart alone seeds the invisible.

Saint-Victor, Richard of

A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment.

Trilling, Lionel

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

John F. Kennedy

10.

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

Anderson, Bill

11.

An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have.

Warhol, Andy

12.

The brain can be easy to buy, but the heart never comes to market.

Lowell, James Russell

13.

Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what, formerly, we could not bear to see or hear, because it was too shocking, painful, or embarrassing, art changes morals.

Sontag, Susan

14.

There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.

Pablo Picasso

15.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

16.

Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother's womb.

Arp, Jean

17.

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure

Baryshnikov, Mikhail

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Art for art's sake is a philosophy of the well-fed.

Yu Cao

21.

The difference between a man who faces death for the sake of an idea and an imitator who goes in search of martyrdom is that whilst the former expresses his idea most fully in death it is the strange feeling of bitterness which comes from failure that the latter really enjoys; the former rejoices in his victory, the latter in his suffering.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

22.

Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

23.

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

24.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.

Picasso, Pablo

25.

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

26.

What is art but a way of seeing?

Berger, Thomas

27.

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

Cioran, E. M.

28.

I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none.

Ben Shahn

29.

In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent businessman.

Lewis, Sinclair

30.

Some people carry their heart in their head and some carry their head in their heart. The trick is to keep them apart yet working together.

Hare, David

31.

Art is a form of catharsis.

Parker, Dorothy

32.

Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.

Edith Wharton

33.

I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.

Roosevelt, Theodore

34.

Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it. Whoever has polished it more sees more -- more unseen forms become manifest to him.

Rumi, Jalal-Uddin

35.

What I dream of is an art of balance.

Henri Matisse

36.

I would rather be ashes than dust. I would rather that my spark would burn out in a brilliant blaze than be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

London, Jack

37.

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

38.

It is time for us all to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever -- the one who recognizes the challenges and does something about it.

Lombardi, Vince

39.

Life isn't long enough for love and art.

W. Somerset Maugham

40.

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

41.

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

Ciardi, John

42.

What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted. [Henry Iv]

Shakespeare, William

43.

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

Bierce, Ambrose

44.

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

45.

Art the end result of perception, wisdom, intelligence, discipline, hard work, passion, luck, accident, and coincidence.

46.

Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.

Twain, Mark

47.

Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.

Barenboim, Daniel

48.

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

49.

Whether joy or sorrowful, the heart needs a double, because a joy shared is doubled and a pain that is shared is divided.

Ruckett

50.

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

Driscoll, Louise