Motivational Quotes

Art

Art is the signature of civilizations.

- Sills, Beverly

Best Quotes about Art

Art imitates Nature in this; not to dare is to dwindle.

Updike, John

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

Ciardi, John

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

Varese, Edward

The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.

Nightingale, Florence

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

Cocteau, Jean

Let each man exercise the art he knows.

Aristophanes

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

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

Paul Gauguin

10.

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

West, Rebecca

11.

The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.

Mailer, Norman

12.

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, while the heart of the fool is in the house of entertainment.

Bible

13.

The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.

Connolly, Cyril

14.

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

Holyfield, Evander

15.

Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.

Rilke, Rainer Maria

16.

Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

Cather, Willa

17.

Love can heal a broken heart.

18.

The eyes see what the heart loves. If the heart loves God and is single in this devotion, then the eyes will see God whether others see Him or not.

Wiersbe, Warren

19.

We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.

John F. Kennedy

20.

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

Kooning, Willem De

21.

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

22.

Art is too serious to be taken seriously.

Reinhardt, Ad

23.

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to the feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.

Gogh, Vincent Van

24.

Art has never been made while thinking of art.

Niko Stumpo

25.

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

David Cronenberg

26.

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

Ruskin, John

27.

What I dream of is an art of balance.

Henri Matisse

28.

Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and far from commanding we are forced to obey it.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

29.

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

Warhol, Andy

30.

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood -- never.

Camus, Albert

31.

You cannot kindle a fire in any other heart until it is burning in your own.

32.

If we keep an open mind, too much is likely to fall into it.

Barney, Natalie Clifford

33.

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.

Matisse, Henri

34.

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

Ambrose Bierce

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.

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

37.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

Pope, Alexander

38.

Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

39.

Art is so wonderfully irrational, exuberantly pointless, but necessary all the same. Pointless and yet necessary, that's hard for a puritan to understand.

Grass, Gunther

40.

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

Godard, Jean-Luc

41.

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

42.

Whether joy or sorrowful, the heart needs a double, because a joy shared is doubled and a pain that is shared is divided.

Ruckett

43.

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

Thurber, James