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

In art as in love, instinct is enough.

France, Anatole

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

William Baziotes

A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.

Baudelaire, Charles

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

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

Varese, Edward

There must be hearts which know the depths of our being, and swear by us, even when the whole world forsakes us.

Gutzkow

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

It is more difficult, and it calls for higher energies of soul, to live a martyr than to die one.

Mann, Horace

Doubt obscures the true vision of the heart.

10.

Let each man exercise the art he knows.

Aristophanes

11.

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

Shakespeare, William

12.

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

Truman, Harry S

13.

Even if I died in the service of the nation, I would be proud of it. Every drop of my blood... will contribute to the growth of this nation and to make it strong and dynamic.

Gandhi, Indira

14.

Art has an enemy called ignorance.

Johnson, Ben

15.

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

16.

The first mistake of Art is to assume that it's serious.

Bangs, Lester

17.

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

Baryshnikov, Mikhail

18.

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.

19.

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

Kennedy, John F.

20.

The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.

Piet Mondrian

21.

The heart always sees before than the head can see.

Carlyle, Thomas

22.

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

Piero Milani

23.

Art is the objectification of feeling.

Langer, Suzanne K.

24.

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

Brancusi, Constantin

25.

[Abstract art is] a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

Al Capp

26.

Wealth and want equally harden the human heart, like frost and fire both are alien to human flesh.

Parker, Theodore

27.

Whether a party can have much success without a woman present I must ask others to decide, but one thing is certain, no party is any fun unless seasoned with folly.

Erasmus, Desiderius

28.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

29.

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

30.

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

31.

Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.

Kael, Pauline

32.

The highest problem of any art is to cause by appearance the illusion of a higher reality.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

33.

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

34.

Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere.

Apollinaire, Guillaume

35.

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

Schnitzler, Arthur

36.

Good art however immoral is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise.

Pound, Ezra

37.

Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century.

Mcluhan, Marshall

38.

The vitality of a new movement in Art must be gauged by the fury it arouses.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

39.

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

40.

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

41.

Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

Einstein, Albert

42.

Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end.

Joyce, James

43.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

44.

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

45.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

46.

It is not flesh and blood, but heart which makes us fathers and sons.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

47.

Many bad artists will tell you that art is life. There's a subtle difference however. You can turn your back on art

48.

Had we never lov'd sae kindly, Had we never lov'd sae blindly, Never met -- or never parted -- we had never been broken-hearted.

Burns, Robert