Motivational Quotes

Art

Doubt obscures the true vision of the heart.

Famous Inspirational Daily Quotes

Best Quotes about 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

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

All the arts we practice are apprenticeship. The big art is our life.

M. C. Richards

There is no true expertise in the humanities without knowing all of the humanities. Art is a vast, ancient interconnected web-work, a fabricated tradition. Over-concentration on any one point is a distortion.

Paglia, Camille

The difference between a man who faces death for the sake of an idea and an imitator who goes in search of martyrdom is that whilst the former expresses his idea most fully in death it is the strange feeling of bitterness which comes from failure that the latter really enjoys; the former rejoices in his victory, the latter in his suffering.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

The heart always sees before than the head can see.

Carlyle, Thomas

As the twentieth century ends, commerce and culture are coming closer together. The distinction between life and art has been eroded by fifty years of enhanced communications, ever-improving reproduction technologies and increasing wealth.

Bayley, Stephen

The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.

Connolly, Cyril

What is art but a way of seeing?

Berger, Thomas

10.

Every artist writes his own autobiography.

Ellis, Havelock

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Edith Wharton

14.

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

John Singer Sargent

15.

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to the feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.

Gogh, Vincent Van

16.

What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.

Paz, Octavio

17.

In any society, the artist has a responsibility. His effectiveness is certainly limited and a painter or writer cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of non-conformity alive. Thanks to them the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts. That small difference is important.

Bunuel, Luis

18.

Art is a form of catharsis.

Parker, Dorothy

19.

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

Mann, Horace

20.

Doubt obscures the true vision of the heart.

21.

Art the end result of perception, wisdom, intelligence, discipline, hard work, passion, luck, accident, and coincidence.

22.

What we play is life.

Louis Armstrong

23.

The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs. Artists of a large and wholesome vitality get rid of their art easily, as they breathe easily or perspire easily. But in artists of less force, the thing becomes a pressure, and produces a definite pain, which is called the artistic temperament.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

24.

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

25.

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

Einstein, Albert

26.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

Pope, Alexander

27.

Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers; to be, for a secular, materialist culture, some sort of replacement for what the love of god offers in the world of faith.

Rushdie, Salman

28.

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

29.

The True Artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

30.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

31.

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

Andre Gide

32.

Advice from a veteran trapeze performer: Throw your heart over the bars and your body will follow.

33.

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

Varese, Edward

34.

O, had I but followed the arts!

Shakespeare, William

35.

There is only one art, whose sole criterion is the power, the authenticity, the revelatory insight, the courage and suggestiveness with which it seeks its truth. Thus, from the standpoint of the work and its worth it is irrelevant to which political ideas the artist as a citizen claims allegiance, which ideas he would like to serve with his work or whether he holds any such ideas at all.

Havel, Vaclav

36.

Some people carry their heart in their head and some carry their head in their heart. The trick is to keep them apart yet working together.

Hare, David

37.

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

38.

Artists must be sacrificed to their art.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

39.

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

Parker, Dorothy

40.

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

41.

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

42.

Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off.

Cioran, E. M.

43.

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

44.

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

Duke Ellington

45.

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

Driscoll, Louise

46.

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

47.

Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.

Tzara, Tristan

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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