Motivational Quotes

Art

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

Best Quotes about Art

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

Gill, Eric

In our own hearts, we mold the whole world's hereafters; and in our own hearts we fashion our own gods.

Melville, Herman

Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.

The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

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

G. K. Chesterton

I do not know what the heart of a rascal may be, but I know what is in the heart of an honest man; it is horrible.

Maistre, Joseph De

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

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

Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.

Sand, George

10.

Those who write for lucre or fame are grosser than the cartel robbers, for they steal the genius of the people, which is its will to resist evil.

Dahlberg, Edward

11.

An artist is forced by others to paint out of his own free will.

Kooning, Willem De

12.

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

13.

Martyrdom does not end something, it only a beginning.

Gandhi, Indira

14.

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

15.

Follow your heart, but be quiet for a while first. Ask questions, then feel the answer. Learn to trust your heart.

16.

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

Crowley, Aleister

17.

What I dream of is an art of balance.

Henri Matisse

18.

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

Proverb, Chinese

19.

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

20.

With an apple I will astonish Paris.

Cezanne, Paul

21.

The heart that truly loves never forgets.

Proverb

22.

The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs. Artists of a large and wholesome vitality get rid of their art easily, as they breathe easily or perspire easily. But in artists of less force, the thing becomes a pressure, and produces a definite pain, which is called the artistic temperament.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

23.

Doubt obscures the true vision of the heart.

24.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

25.

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

Varese, Edward

26.

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

27.

Each of the arts whose office is to refine, purify, adorn, embellish and grace life is under the patronage of a muse, no god being found worthy to preside over them.

Farnham, Eliza

28.

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

29.

Let each man exercise the art he knows.

Aristophanes

30.

Faint hearts never win fair ladies.

Proverb, Danish

31.

It is not in life, but in art that self-fulfillment is to be found.

Woodberry, George E.

32.

The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.

Piet Mondrian

33.

It is not the size of a man but the size of his heart that matters.

Holyfield, Evander

34.

Nothing right can be accomplished in art without enthusiasm.

Schumann, Robert

35.

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

Proust, Marcel

36.

Art, that great undogmatized church.

Key, Ellen

37.

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

Paz, Octavio

38.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

39.

The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.

Connolly, Cyril

40.

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

41.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

42.

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

Ambrose Bierce

43.

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

44.

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

John Singer Sargent

45.

Pop artists deal with the lowly trivia of possessions and equipment that the present generation is lugging along with it on its safari into the future.

Ballard, J. G.

46.

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.

Alfred North Whitehead

47.

The people who make art their business are mostly impostors.

Picasso, Pablo

48.

Good art however immoral is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise.

Pound, Ezra

49.

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.

50.

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