Motivational Quotes

Art

The object of art is to give life a shape. [Midsummer Nights Dream]

- Shakespeare, William

Best Quotes about Art

Fine art, that exists for itself alone, is art in a final state of impotence. If nobody, including the artist, acknowledges art as a means of knowing the world, then art is relegated to a kind of rumpus room of the mind and the irresponsibility of the artist and the irrelevance of art to actual living becomes part and parcel of the practice of art.

Carter, Angela

Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother's womb.

Arp, Jean

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

Jacob, Max

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

Dubuffet, Jean

Art is an absolute mistress; she will not be coquetted with or slighted; she requires the most entire self-devotion, and she repays with grand triumphs.

Cushman, Charlotte Saunders

Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.

Latimer, Bishop Hugh

The artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business.

Berryman, John

Photography, fortunately, to me has not only been a profession but also a contact between people - to understand human nature and record, if possible, the best in each individual.

Nickolas Muray

10.

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need. [when asked how he managed to make his remarkable statues.]

Rodin, Auguste

11.

I'm still an artist. I'm never gonna do a shit movie, because I've got my modeling to support me.

Jovovich, Milla

12.

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

13.

Art is the only thing that can go on mattering, once it has stopped hurting.

Bowen, Elizabeth

14.

Art is too serious to be taken seriously.

Reinhardt, Ad

15.

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

Proverb, Chinese

16.

Art for art's sake is a philosophy of the well-fed.

Yu Cao

17.

As noble Art has survived noble nature, so too she marches ahead of it, fashioning and awakening by her inspiration. Before Truth sends her triumphant light into the depths of the heart, imagination catches its rays, and the peaks of humanity will be glowing when humid night still lingers in the valleys.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

18.

I can't criticize what I don't understand. If you want to call this art, you've got the benefit of all my doubts.

Charles Rosin

19.

The artist is the child of his time; but woe to him if he is also its disciple, or even its favorite.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

20.

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

21.

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

Ben Shahn

22.

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

Churchill, Winston

23.

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

Jeff Melvoin

24.

I am as content to die for God's eternal truth on the scaffold as in any other way.

Brown, John Mason

25.

The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.

Blackie, Professor

26.

The powerful play goes on -- and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

27.

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

28.

There are in every generation those who shrink from the ultimate sacrifice, but there are in every generation those who make it with joy and laughter and these are the salt of the generations.

Pearse, Patrick Henry

29.

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

30.

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

Weil, Simone

31.

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

32.

Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that you live, if you do.

Elizabeth Bowen

33.

Art, that great undogmatized church.

Key, Ellen

34.

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

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De

35.

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

36.

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

Isak Dineson

37.

Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

38.

One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is when we see its separate forms jumbled together.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

39.

It is all very well, when the pen flows, but then there are the dark days when imagination deserts one, and it is an effort to put anything down on paper. That little you have achieved stares at you at the end of the day, and you know the next morning you will have to scrape it down and start again.

Elizabeth Aston

40.

Every artist writes his own autobiography.

Ellis, Havelock

41.

Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.

West, Rebecca

42.

What ever purifies the heart also fortifies it.

Blair, Hugh

43.

Pictures deface walls more often than they decorate them.

Wright, Frank Lloyd

44.

I will soon be going out to shape all the singing tomorrows.

Peri, Gabriel

45.

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

46.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

47.

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

Baryshnikov, Mikhail

48.

Artists are, above all, men who want to become inhuman.

Apollinaire, Guillaume

49.

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