Motivational Quotes

Art

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

Best Quotes about Art

The True Artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature.

Cicero

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

Lowell, James Russell

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

Baryshnikov, Mikhail

If your heart were sincere and upright, every creature would be unto you a looking-glass of life and a book of holy doctrine.

Kempis, Thomas

Art -- the one achievement of Man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised.

Thurber, James

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.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

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

10.

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

11.

For us artists there waits the joyous compromise through art with all that wounded or defeated us in daily life; in this way, not to evade destiny, as the ordinary people try to do, but to fulfil it in its true potential --the imagination.

Durrell, Lawrence

12.

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

13.

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.

Burroughs, William S.

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.

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

Edmond de Goncourt

16.

The vitality of a new movement in Art must be gauged by the fury it arouses.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

17.

This is the artist, then, life's hungry man, the glutton of eternity, beauty's miser, glory's slave.

Wolfe, Thomas

18.

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting with the gift of speech.

Simonides

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.

Of all the arts in which the wise excel, nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.

Buckingham, Duke of

21.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

22.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

23.

Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

24.

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

Suttner, Bertha Von

25.

In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.

Fischer, Ernst

26.

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

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.

Whether a party can have much success without a woman present I must ask others to decide, but one thing is certain, no party is any fun unless seasoned with folly.

Erasmus, Desiderius

29.

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

30.

Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Cassady, Neal

34.

Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.

Weil, Simone

35.

Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end.

Joyce, James

36.

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

37.

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

38.

In free society art is not a weapon. Artists are not engineers of the soul.

Kennedy, John F.

39.

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

Shaw, George Bernard

40.

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

Dubuffet, Jean

41.

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

Ben Shahn

42.

It is more difficult, and it calls for higher energies of soul, to live a martyr than to die one.

Mann, Horace

43.

I'm the artist formally known as Beck. I have a genius wig. When I put that wig on, then the true genius emerges. I don't have enough hair to be a genius. I think you have to have hair going everywhere.

Beck

44.

One thing that makes art different from life is that in art things have a shape... it allows us to fix our emotions on events at the moment they occur, it permits a union of heart and mind and tongue and tear.

French, Marilyn

45.

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

46.

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

Godard, Jean-Luc

47.

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

48.

Nothing right can be accomplished in art without enthusiasm.