Motivational Quotes

Art

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

Best Quotes about Art

Art never improves, but the material of art is never quite the same.

Eliot, T. S.

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

Mann, Horace

No sheath shall hold what finds its home in flesh.

Proverb

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.

Walt Whitman

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

Simonides

The work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal.

Breton, Andre

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

Edmond de Goncourt

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

Howe, Nathaniel

Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers; to be, for a secular, materialist culture, some sort of replacement for what the love of god offers in the world of faith.

Rushdie, Salman

10.

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

Weil, Simone

11.

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

12.

I never spend more than one hour in a gallery. That is as long as one's power of appreciation persists.

W. Somerset Maugham

13.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

14.

A heart in love with beauty never grows old.

Proverb, Turkish

15.

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

16.

Every artist was first an amateur.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

17.

If that's art, I'm a Hottentot!

Truman, Harry S

18.

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

Berle, Adolf

19.

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

Conrad, Joseph

20.

It is either easy or impossible.

Dali, Salvador

21.

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

22.

Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me leave to do my utmost.

Isak Dineson

23.

If I spit, they will take my spit and frame it as great art.

Picasso, Pablo

24.

Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.

Miller, Henry

25.

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

Proust, Marcel

26.

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

27.

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

Churchill, Winston

28.

You're confusing product with process. Most people, when they criticize, whether they like it or hate it, they're talking about product. That's not art, that's the result of art. Art, to whatever degree we can get a handle on (I'm not sure that we really can) is a process. It begins in the heart and the mind with the eyes and hands.

Jeff Melvoin

29.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.

Wilson, Robert

30.

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

Crowley, Aleister

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.

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

Warhol, Andy

33.

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

Suttner, Bertha Von

34.

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

Chopra, Deepak

35.

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

Kennedy, John F.

36.

Wherever art appears, life disappears.

Picabia, Francis

37.

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.

Novalis

38.

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

Wolfe, Thomas

39.

What of us lies in the hearts of others is our truest and deepest self.

Herder, Johann Gottfried Von

40.

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

Ciardi, John

41.

A painting in a museum probably hears more foolish remarks than anything else in the world.

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De

42.

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

43.

Repetition is the death of art.

Robin Green

44.

I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for religion --I have shuddered at it. I shudder no more --I could be martyred for my religion --Love is my religion --I could die for that.

Keats, John

45.

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

46.

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

Driscoll, Louise

47.

Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.

Twain, Mark

48.

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

49.

As the twentieth century ends, commerce and culture are coming closer together. The distinction between life and art has been eroded by fifty years of enhanced communications, ever-improving reproduction technologies and increasing wealth.

Bayley, Stephen

50.

The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

Eliot, T. S.