Motivational Quotes

Art

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

- Ruskin, John

Best Quotes about Art

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

Capp, Al

In any society, the artist has a responsibility. His effectiveness is certainly limited and a painter or writer cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of non-conformity alive. Thanks to them the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts. That small difference is important.

Bunuel, Luis

All paths are the same, leading nowhere. Therefore, pick a path with heart!

Castaneda, Carlos

In every veil you see, the Divine Beauty is concealed, making every heart a slave to him. In love to him the heart finds its life; in desire for him the soul finds its happiness. The heart which loves a fair one here, though it knows it not, is really his lover.

Jami

Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.

Tynan, Kenneth

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

The way of the world is, to praise dead saints, and persecute living ones.

Howe, Nathaniel

One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honor or observation.

Scott, Sir Walter

Balance is the enemy of art.

Eyre, Richard

10.

Life isn't long enough for love and art.

W. Somerset Maugham

11.

The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.

Berle, Adolf

12.

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

13.

Repetition is the death of art.

Robin Green

14.

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

15.

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

Paul Gauguin

16.

The artist belongs to their work, not the work to the artist.

Novalis

17.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

18.

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.

E. M. Forster

19.

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

20.

Not the glittering weapon fights the fight, but rather the hero's heart.

Proverb

21.

An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why.

Faulkner, William

22.

Whenever, at a party, I have been in the mood to study fools, I have always looked for a great beauty: they always gather round her like flies around a fruit stall.

Richter, Jean Paul

23.

It is either easy or impossible.

Dali, Salvador

24.

What is art but a way of seeing?

Berger, Thomas

25.

Humanity is the rich effluvium, it is the waste and the manure and the soil, and from it grows the tree of the arts.

Pound, Ezra

26.

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

Thurber, James

27.

Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.

Conrad, Joseph

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

32.

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

Stephen Nachmanovitch

33.

Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, cannot avoid cheating truth.

Riding, Laura

34.

The artist must conceive with warmth yet execute with coolness.

Winkelmann

35.

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

Kooning, Willem De

36.

Don't waste time trying to break a man's heart; be satisfied if you can just manage to chip it in a brand new place.

Rowland, Helen

37.

In art as in love, instinct is enough.

France, Anatole

38.

Nature is inside art as its content, not outside as its model.

Frye, Northrop

39.

Art, that great undogmatized church.

Key, Ellen

40.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

41.

I say that good painters imitated nature; but that bad ones vomited it.

Miguel de Cervantes

42.

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

Holyfield, Evander

43.

All the arts we practice are apprenticeship. The big art is our life.

M. C. Richards

44.

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

45.

The idea of a mass audience was really an invention of the Industrial Revolution.

David Cronenberg

46.

Art distills sensations and embodies it with enhanced meaning.

Barzun, Jacques

47.

Art forms of the past were really considered elitist. Bach did not compose for the masses, neither did Beethoven. It was always for patrons, aristocrats, and royalty. Now we have a sort of democratic version of that, which is to say that the audience is so splintered in its interests.

David Cronenberg

48.

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

Piet Mondrian

49.

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

Cioran, E. M.

50.

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