Motivational Quotes

Art

Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.

- Twain, Mark

Best Quotes about Art

Often while reading a book one feels that the author would have preferred to paint rather than write; one can sense the pleasure he derives from describing a landscape or a person, as if he were painting what he is saying, because deep in his heart he would have preferred to use brushes and colors.

Picasso, Pablo

If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently and replace it tenderly in its Master's presence. And even if you did nothing during the whole ofyour hour but bring your heart back and place it again in Our Lord's presence, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed.

Francis De Sales, St.

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

Art for art's sake is a philosophy of the well-fed.

Yu Cao

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

Life isn't long enough for love and art.

W. Somerset Maugham

In art as in love, instinct is enough.

France, Anatole

I shut my eyes in order to see.

Paul Gauguin

Art for art's sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orderly product which our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths, it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden... it is the best evidence we can have of our dignity.

Forster, Edward M.

10.

The heart always sees before than the head can see.

Carlyle, Thomas

11.

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

Mailer, Norman

12.

It is either easy or impossible.

Dali, Salvador

13.

The art of creation is older than the art of killing.

Voznesensky, Andrei

14.

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

Parker, Dorothy

15.

No human beings more dangerous than those who have suffered for a belief: the great persecutors are recruited from the martyrs not quite beheaded. Far from diminishing the appetite for power, suffering exasperates it.

Cioran, E. M.

16.

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

Kooning, Willem De

17.

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

18.

In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.

Fischer, Ernst

19.

By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved.

Updike, John

20.

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

21.

For us artists there waits the joyous compromise through art with all that wounded or defeated us in daily life; in this way, not to evade destiny, as the ordinary people try to do, but to fulfil it in its true potential --the imagination.

Durrell, Lawrence

22.

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

Kennedy, John F.

23.

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

Howe, Nathaniel

24.

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

25.

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

Warhol, Andy

26.

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

27.

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

Ginsberg, Allen

28.

The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.

Blackie, Professor

29.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

Jacob, Max

30.

Pop artists deal with the lowly trivia of possessions and equipment that the present generation is lugging along with it on its safari into the future.

Ballard, J. G.

31.

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

Gutzkow

32.

If I keep a green bough in my heart, the singing bird will come.

Proverb, Chinese

33.

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature.

Rand, Ayn

34.

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

Proust, Marcel

35.

Any artist should be grateful for a na?ve grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.

Bellow, Saul

36.

I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for religion --I have shuddered at it. I shudder no more --I could be martyred for my religion --Love is my religion --I could die for that.

Keats, John

37.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

38.

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

Simonides

39.

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

Murdoch, Iris

40.

Only conservatives believe that subversion is still being carried on in the arts and that society is being shaken by it. Advanced art today is no longer a cause --it contains no moral imperative. There is no virtue in clinging to principles and standards, no vice in selling or in selling out.

Rosenberg, Harold

41.

What is art but life upon the larger scale, the higher. When, graduating up in a spiral line of still expanding and ascending gyres, it pushes toward the intense significance of all things, hungry for the infinite?

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

42.

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

David Cronenberg

43.

The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.

Huxley, Aldous

44.

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

Paul Gauguin

45.

A painting in a museum probably hears more foolish remarks than anything else in the world.

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De

46.

Art is permitted to survive only if it renounces the right to be different, and integrates itself into the omnipotent realm of the profane.

Adorno, Theodor W.

47.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

48.

Photography, fortunately, to me has not only been a profession but also a contact between people - to understand human nature and record, if possible, the best in each individual.

Nickolas Muray

49.

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.

50.

Through art we express our conception of what nature is not.

Picasso, Pablo