Motivational Quotes

Art

It is not in life, but in art that self-fulfillment is to be found.

- Woodberry, George E.

Best Quotes about Art

Balance is the enemy of art.

Eyre, Richard

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

Ruskin, John

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

Picasso, Pablo

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature.

Cicero

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

Einstein, Albert

By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved.

Updike, John

Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of one's chosen form.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

Churchill, Winston

10.

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

Baryshnikov, Mikhail

11.

There is in every human heart Some not completely barren part, Where seeds of truth and love might grow, And flowers of generous virtue flow; To plant, to watch, to water there, This be our duty, be our care.

Bowring, Sir John

12.

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

Eugene Delacroix

13.

Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

14.

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

15.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

16.

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.

17.

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

Melville, Herman

18.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

19.

As noble Art has survived noble nature, so too she marches ahead of it, fashioning and awakening by her inspiration. Before Truth sends her triumphant light into the depths of the heart, imagination catches its rays, and the peaks of humanity will be glowing when humid night still lingers in the valleys.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

20.

Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.

Sand, George

21.

The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn't make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it.

Stein, Gertrude

22.

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

Paul Gauguin

23.

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

Howe, Nathaniel

24.

Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother's womb.

Arp, Jean

25.

Twentieth-century art may start with nothing, but it flourishes by virtue of its belief in itself, in the possibility of control over what seems essentially uncontrollable, in the coherence of the inchoate, and in its ability to create its own values.

Alvarez, A.

26.

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

27.

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

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De

28.

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

Holyfield, Evander

29.

Art is skill, that is the first meaning of the word.

Gill, Eric

30.

The public history of modern art is the story of conventional people not knowing what they are dealing with.

Motherwell, Robert

31.

Whatever an artist's personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical. He acts from or upon other artists.

Kooning, Willem De

32.

Doubt obscures the true vision of the heart.

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He's not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he's really needed.

Hockney, David

37.

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

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

38.

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

39.

What is art but a way of seeing?

Berger, Thomas

40.

Art is good when it springs from necessity. This kind of origin is the guarantee of its value; there is no other.

Cassady, Neal

41.

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

Truman, Harry S

42.

I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.

Frida Kahlo

43.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing: we know this in countless ways.

Pascal, Blaise

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

It is all very well, when the pen flows, but then there are the dark days when imagination deserts one, and it is an effort to put anything down on paper. That little you have achieved stares at you at the end of the day, and you know the next morning you will have to scrape it down and start again.

Elizabeth Aston

48.

Let each man exercise the art he knows.

Aristophanes

49.

A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment.

Trilling, Lionel

50.

The object of art is to give life a shape. [Midsummer Nights Dream]

Shakespeare, William