Motivational Quotes

Art

To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.

- Tolstoy, Count Leo

Best Quotes about Art

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

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.

Burroughs, William S.

Twentieth-century art may start with nothing, but it flourishes by virtue of its belief in itself, in the possibility of control over what seems essentially uncontrollable, in the coherence of the inchoate, and in its ability to create its own values.

Alvarez, A.

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

Truman, Harry S

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

Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century.

Mcluhan, Marshall

It is not in life, but in art that self-fulfillment is to be found.

Woodberry, George E.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause.

Zedong, Mao

10.

Let each man exercise the art he knows.

Aristophanes

11.

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

12.

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

13.

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

Jeff Melvoin

14.

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

Howe, Nathaniel

15.

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.

Pablo Picasso

16.

Technology adds nothing to art. Two thousand years ago, I could tell you a story, and at any point during the story I could stop, and ask, Now do you want the hero to be kidnapped, or not? But that would, of course, have ruined the story. Part of the experience of being entertained is sitting back and plugging into someone else's vision.

Penn Jillette

17.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

18.

What better way to prove that you understand a subject than to make money out of it?

Rosenberg, Harold

19.

Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.

Edith Wharton

20.

Modern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at. At least, some of them are. But they are quite impossible to live with; they are too clever, too assertive, too intellectual. Their meaning is too obvious, and their method too clearly defined. One

Wilde, Oscar

21.

With an apple I will astonish Paris.

Cezanne, Paul

22.

Where are you searching for me, friend? Look! Here am I right within you. Not in temple, nor in mosque, not in Kaaba nor Kailas, but here right within you am I.

Kabir

23.

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

Motherwell, Robert

24.

The torments of martyrdom are probably most keenly felt by the bystanders.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

25.

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

Murdoch, Iris

26.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

27.

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

28.

The arts are not just instantaneous pleasure -- if you don't like it, the artist is wrong. I belong to the generation which says if you don't like it, you don't understand and you ought to find out.

Drummond, John

29.

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

Simonides

30.

Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it. Whoever has polished it more sees more -- more unseen forms become manifest to him.

Rumi, Jalal-Uddin

31.

Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

32.

Balance is the enemy of art.

Eyre, Richard

33.

Art need no longer be an account of past sensations. It can become the direct organization of more highly evolved sensations. It is a question of producing ourselves, not things that enslave us.

Debord, Guy

34.

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

Proverb

35.

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.

36.

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

37.

But the one thing you should. not do is to suppose that when something is wrong with the arts, it is wrong with the arts ONLY.

Pound, Ezra

38.

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

39.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

Pablo Picasso

40.

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

Conrad, Joseph

41.

Each painting has its own way of evolving...When the painting is finished, the subject reaveals itself.

William Baziotes

42.

It is the cause, not the death that makes the martyr.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

43.

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

Berle, Adolf

44.

I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

Orson Welles

45.

Art has never been made while thinking of art.

Niko Stumpo

46.

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

Sand, George

47.

Use your head and your heart, its not everything but its a start.

48.

The creation of art is not the fulfillment of a need but the creation of a need. The world never needed Beethoven's Fifth Symphony until he created it. Now we could not live without it.

Louis I Kahn

49.

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

Parker, Dorothy

50.

It isn't enough for your heart to break because everybody's heart is broken now.

Ginsberg, Allen