Motivational Quotes

Art

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

- Thurber, James

Best Quotes about Art

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

Dubuffet, Jean

I am an artist I am here to live out loud.

Zola, Emile

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined; no sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet to chase the glowing hours with flying feet.

Gordon, George

I see little of more importance to the future of our country and of civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

Kennedy, John F.

Painting is an attempt to come to terms with life. There are as many solutions as there are human beings.

George Tooker

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

One thing that makes art different from life is that in art things have a shape... it allows us to fix our emotions on events at the moment they occur, it permits a union of heart and mind and tongue and tear.

French, Marilyn

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

Frye, Northrop

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

Proust, Marcel

10.

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

Walt Whitman

11.

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

Ruskin, John

12.

I can't work without a model. I won't say I turn my back on nature ruthlessly in order to turn a study into a picture, arranging the colors, enlarging and simplifying; but in the matter of form I am too afraid of departing from the possible and the true.

Gogh, Vincent Van

13.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

14.

What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted. [Henry Iv]

Shakespeare, William

15.

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

16.

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

17.

It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance.

Midler, Bette

18.

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

19.

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

Herder, Johann Gottfried Von

20.

Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity, never of the correctness of a belief.

Schnitzler, Arthur

21.

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

22.

In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent businessman.

Lewis, Sinclair

23.

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

24.

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

25.

I don't believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there's one thing that's dangerous for an artist, it's precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.

Federico Fellini

26.

Art is the objectification of feeling.

Langer, Suzanne K.

27.

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.

Andre Gide

28.

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

29.

We are not here to triumph by fighting, by strata gem, or by resistance, not to fight with beasts as men. We have fought the beast and have conquered. We have only to conquer now,by suffering. This is the easier victory.

Eliot, T. S.

30.

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

31.

The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.

Geldzahler, Henry

32.

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

Kennedy, John F.

33.

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

Proverb

34.

Art is skill, that is the first meaning of the word.

Gill, Eric

35.

The heart will break, but broken live on.

Byron, Lord

36.

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.

Murdoch, Iris

37.

Feminist art is not some tiny creek running off the great river of real art. It is not some crack in an otherwise flawless stone. It is, quite spectacularly I think, art which is not based on the subjugation of one half of the species. It is art which will take the great human themes --love, death, heroism, suffering, history itself --and render them fully human. It may also, though perhaps our imaginations are so mutilated now that we are incapable even of the ambition, introduce a new theme, one as great and as rich as those others --should we call it joy?

Dworkin, Andrea

38.

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

Duke Ellington

39.

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

40.

Impartial. Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.

Bierce, Ambrose

41.

The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart.

Schumann, Robert

42.

Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.

Sand, George

43.

I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.

Frida Kahlo

44.

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

Weil, Simone

45.

Let each man exercise the art he knows.

Aristophanes

46.

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

Isak Dineson

47.

Have thy heart in heaven and thy hands upon the earth. Ascend in piety and descend in charity. For this is the Nature of Light and the way of the children.

Vaughan, Thomas

48.

What I dream of is an art of balance.

Henri Matisse

49.

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

Wilson, Robert

50.

Drink, and dance and laugh and lie, love the reeling midnight through, for tomorrow we shall die! (But, alas, we never do.)

Parker, Dorothy