Motivational Quotes

Art

What is Art? It is the response of man's creative soul to the call of the Real.

- Tagore, Rabindranath

Best Quotes about Art

The function of art is to make that understood which in the form of argument would be incomprehensible.

Brancusi, Constantin

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

Conrad, Joseph

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

Lowell, James Russell

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Why should I buy expensive art when I can make my own.

Piero Milani

Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort.

Shaw, George Bernard

Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.

Twain, Mark

Art has never been made while thinking of art.

Niko Stumpo

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

10.

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

West, Rebecca

11.

If the wolf had ever come to our back door, he'd have had to bring a picnic lunch.

Anderson, Bill

12.

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

Simonides

13.

Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

14.

A heart in love with beauty never grows old.

Proverb, Turkish

15.

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

Proust, Marcel

16.

The public history of modern art is the story of conventional people not knowing what they are dealing with.

Motherwell, Robert

17.

Their is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

18.

When I am finishing a picture I hold some God-made object up to it -- a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand -- as a kind of final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there's a clash between the two, it is bad art.

Chagall, Marc

19.

There never was any heart truly great and generous, that was not also tender and compassionate.

Frost, Robert

20.

There is in every human heart Some not completely barren part, Where seeds of truth and love might grow, And flowers of generous virtue flow; To plant, to watch, to water there, This be our duty, be our care.

Bowring, Sir John

21.

Enjoyed it! One more drink and I'd have been under the host.

Parker, Dorothy

22.

At every party there are two kinds of people -- those who want to go home and those who don't. The trouble is, they are usually married to each other.

Landers, Ann

23.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

24.

The people who make art their business are mostly impostors.

Picasso, Pablo

25.

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

Wilson, Robert

26.

I can't tell you what art does and how it does it, but I know that often art has judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past suffered, so that it has never been forgotten. Art, when it functions like this, becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring, guts, and honor.

Berger, John

27.

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

28.

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

Howe, Nathaniel

29.

The heart that truly loves never forgets.

Proverb

30.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul. The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of Artist.

Poe, Edgar Allan

31.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

Pablo Picasso

32.

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

Camus, Albert

33.

Thou art my glory and the exultation of y heart: thou art my hope and refuge in the day of my trouble.

Kempis, Thomas

34.

Art is a reality, not a definition; inasmuch as it approaches a reality, it approaches perfection, and inasmuch as it approaches a mere definition, it is imperfect and untrue.

Haydon, Benjamin

35.

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

Picasso, Pablo

36.

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

Kooning, Willem De

37.

Follow your heart, but be quiet for a while first. Ask questions, then feel the answer. Learn to trust your heart.

38.

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

Weil, Simone

39.

Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what, formerly, we could not bear to see or hear, because it was too shocking, painful, or embarrassing, art changes morals.

Sontag, Susan

40.

Nothing right can be accomplished in art without enthusiasm.

Schumann, Robert

41.

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

Driscoll, Louise

42.

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

43.

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

44.

The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.

Benjamin, Walter

45.

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

46.

Is there not an art, a music, and a stream of words that shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life?

Wordsworth, William

47.

Doubt obscures the true vision of the heart.

48.

By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved.

Updike, John

49.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

50.

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