Motivational Quotes

Art

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

Best Quotes about Art

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.

Waugh, Evelyn

Bad artists always admire each other's work. They call it being large-minded and free from prejudice. But a truly great artist cannot conceive of life being shown, or beauty fashioned, under any conditions other than those he has selected.

Wilde, Oscar

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood -- never.

Camus, Albert

Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.

Amy Lowell

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

Art forms of the past were really considered elitist. Bach did not compose for the masses, neither did Beethoven. It was always for patrons, aristocrats, and royalty. Now we have a sort of democratic version of that, which is to say that the audience is so splintered in its interests.

David Cronenberg

Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.

Cather, Willa

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

John Singer Sargent

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

Cioran, E. M.

10.

In our own hearts, we mold the whole world's hereafters; and in our own hearts we fashion our own gods.

Melville, Herman

11.

Each of the arts whose office is to refine, purify, adorn, embellish and grace life is under the patronage of a muse, no god being found worthy to preside over them.

Farnham, Eliza

12.

It is impossible to give a clear account of the world, but art can teach us to reproduce it --just as the world reproduces itself in the course of its eternal gyrations. The primordial sea indefatigably repeats the same words and casts up the same astonished beings on the same sea-shore.

Camus, Albert

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.

The heart that truly loves never forgets.

Proverb

15.

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

William Baziotes

16.

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

Pablo Picasso

17.

There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.

Pablo Picasso

18.

Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

19.

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

20.

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

Burroughs, William S.

21.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

22.

Art is the objectification of feeling.

Langer, Suzanne K.

23.

Let each man exercise the art he knows.

Aristophanes

24.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

Pablo Picasso

25.

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

26.

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

Warhol, Andy

27.

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

Isak Dineson

28.

Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature.

Cicero

29.

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

30.

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.

Eugene Delacroix

31.

Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

32.

Life isn't long enough for love and art.

W. Somerset Maugham

33.

While I do not suggest that humanity will ever be able to dispense with its martyrs, I cannot avoid the suspicion that with a little more thought and a little less belief their number may be substantially reduced.

Haldane, John B. S.

34.

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

35.

The artist is the child of his time; but woe to him if he is also its disciple, or even its favorite.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

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.

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

Frye, Northrop

38.

Whether joy or sorrowful, the heart needs a double, because a joy shared is doubled and a pain that is shared is divided.