Motivational Quotes

Art

There is the falsely mystical view of art that assumes a kind of supernatural inspiration, a possession by universal forces unrelated to questions of power and privilege or the artist's relation to bread and blood. In this view, the channel of art can only become clogged and misdirected by the artist's concern with merely temporary and local disturbances. The song is higher than the struggle.

- Rich, Adrienne

Best Quotes about Art

The great artist is a slave to his ideals.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

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

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

Ben Shahn

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

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving. A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants.

Lao-Tzu

As a general truth, it is safe to say that any picture that produces a moral impression is a bad picture.

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De

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

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

Ciardi, John

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

10.

Making social comment is an artificial place for an artist to start from. If an artist is touched by some social condition, what the artist creates will reflect that, but you can't force it.

Lewitzky, Bella

11.

Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort.

Shaw, George Bernard

12.

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

13.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

14.

Art is good when it springs from necessity. This kind of origin is the guarantee of its value; there is no other.

Cassady, Neal

15.

The less you open your heart to others, the more your heart suffers.

Chopra, Deepak

16.

Advice from a veteran trapeze performer: Throw your heart over the bars and your body will follow.

17.

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

18.

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

Suttner, Bertha Von

19.

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

Varese, Edward

20.

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

Einstein, Albert

21.

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

Ward Jenkins

22.

It is either easy or impossible.

Dali, Salvador

23.

Art is a reality, not a definition; inasmuch as it approaches a reality, it approaches perfection, and inasmuch as it approaches a mere definition, it is imperfect and untrue.

Haydon, Benjamin

24.

The heart is the best reflective thinker.

Phillips, Wendell

25.

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

26.

It's not your painting anymore. It stopped being your painting the moment that you finished it.

Jeff Melvoin

27.

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

Cioran, E. M.

28.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

29.

The more a man cultivates the arts the less he fornicates. A more and more apparent cleavage occurs between the spirit and the brute.

Baudelaire, Charles

30.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

31.

The heart will break, but broken live on.

Byron, Lord

32.

The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart.

Schumann, Robert

33.

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

34.

The art of creation is older than the art of killing.

Voznesensky, Andrei

35.

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

36.

Many bad artists will tell you that art is life. There's a subtle difference however. You can turn your back on art

37.

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

38.

Art has an enemy called ignorance.

Johnson, Ben

39.

Whether you call my heart affectionate, or you call it womanish: I confess, that to my misfortune, it is soft.

Ovid

40.

What I dream of is an art of balance.

Henri Matisse

41.

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

42.

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

43.

A Great man is he who does not lose his childlike heart.

Mencius (Mengzi Meng-tse)

44.

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

45.

If I keep a green bough in my heart, the singing bird will come.

Proverb, Chinese

46.

Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors?

Edith Wharton

47.

Enjoyed it! One more drink and I'd have been under the host.

Parker, Dorothy

48.

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to the feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.

Gogh, Vincent Van

49.

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

Diana, Princess of Wales

50.

The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.

Connolly, Cyril