Motivational Quotes

Art

I never spend more than one hour in a gallery. That is as long as one's power of appreciation persists.

- W. Somerset Maugham

Best Quotes about Art

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

Baryshnikov, Mikhail

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

Like other parties of the kind, it was first silent, then talky, then argumentative, then disputatious, then unintelligible, then altogether, then inarticulate, and then drunk. When we had reached the last step of this glorious ladder, it was difficult to get down again without stumbling.

Byron, Lord

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

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De

If I didn't start painting, I would have raised chickens.

Moses, Grandma

In art as in love, instinct is enough.

France, Anatole

The heart will break, but broken live on.

Byron, Lord

Experiment is necessary in establishing an academy, but certain principles must apply to this business of art as to any other business which affects the artistic tic sense of the community. Great art speaks a language which every intelligent person can understand. The people who call themselves modernists today speak a different language.

Menzies, Robert

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

10.

What we play is life.

Louis Armstrong

11.

It is time for us all to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever -- the one who recognizes the challenges and does something about it.

Lombardi, Vince

12.

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

Conrad, Joseph

13.

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

14.

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.

15.

Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.

Weil, Simone

16.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

17.

Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.

Rilke, Rainer Maria

18.

The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

Eliot, T. S.

19.

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

Parker, Dorothy

20.

It is either easy or impossible.

Dali, Salvador

21.

The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.

Jackson Pollock

22.

What I dream of is an art of balance.

Henri Matisse

23.

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

24.

Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

Cather, Willa

25.

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

26.

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

Joyce, James

27.

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

28.

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.

29.

Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and far from commanding we are forced to obey it.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

30.

Faint hearts never win fair ladies.

Proverb, Danish

31.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

32.

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

33.

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.

Joseph Chilton Pearce

34.

It is not the size of a man but the size of his heart that matters.

Holyfield, Evander

35.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

36.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined; no sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet to chase the glowing hours with flying feet.

Gordon, George

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.

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.

Novalis

43.

Life isn't long enough for love and art.

W. Somerset Maugham

44.

Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.

Godard, Jean-Luc

45.

I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none.

Ben Shahn

46.

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

Melville, Herman

47.

The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

48.

Have thy heart in heaven and thy hands upon the earth. Ascend in piety and descend in charity. For this is the Nature of Light and the way of the children.

Vaughan, Thomas

49.

What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.

Ruskin, John

50.

The creative artist seems to be almost the only kind of man that you could never meet on neutral ground. You can only meet him as an artist. He sees nothing objectively because his own ego is always in the foreground of every picture.

Chandler, Raymond