Motivational Quotes

Art

Pictures deface walls more often than they decorate them.

- Wright, Frank Lloyd

Best Quotes about Art

Of all the arts in which the wise excel, nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.

Buckingham, Duke of

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

Artists must be sacrificed to their art.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

The brain can be easy to buy, but the heart never comes to market.

Lowell, James Russell

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.

I have joined my heart to thee: all that exists are thou. O Lord, beloved of my heart, thou art the home of all; where indeed is the heart in which thou dost not dwell?

Jafar

Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.

Novalis

Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity, never of the correctness of a belief.

Schnitzler, Arthur

10.

Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.

Kael, Pauline

11.

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

12.

I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it -- on the inside.

13.

Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.

Miller, Henry

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.

Life isn't long enough for love and art.

W. Somerset Maugham

16.

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

17.

The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.

Piet Mondrian

18.

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

Driscoll, Louise

19.

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

20.

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

Edith Wharton

21.

The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.

Gide, Andre

22.

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

23.

The function of art is to make that understood which in the form of argument would be incomprehensible.

Brancusi, Constantin

24.

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

Proverb, Chinese

25.

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

Crowley, Aleister

26.

Artists are, above all, men who want to become inhuman.

Apollinaire, Guillaume

27.

Modern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at. At least, some of them are. But they are quite impossible to live with; they are too clever, too assertive, too intellectual. Their meaning is too obvious, and their method too clearly defined. One

Wilde, Oscar

28.

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

Andre Gide

29.

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

30.

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.

E. M. Forster

31.

I will greet this day with love in my heart. For this is the greatest secret of success in all ventures. Muscles can split a shield and even destroy life itself but only the unseen power of love can open the hearts of man. And until I master this act I will remain no more than a peddler in the marketplace. I will make love my greatest weapon and none on who I call can defend upon its force... my love will melt all hearts liken to the sun whose rays soften the coldest day.

Mandino, Og

32.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.

Baldwin, James

33.

Technology adds nothing to art. Two thousand years ago, I could tell you a story, and at any point during the story I could stop, and ask, Now do you want the hero to be kidnapped, or not? But that would, of course, have ruined the story. Part of the experience of being entertained is sitting back and plugging into someone else's vision.

Penn Jillette

34.

The arts are not just instantaneous pleasure -- if you don't like it, the artist is wrong. I belong to the generation which says if you don't like it, you don't understand and you ought to find out.

Drummond, John

35.

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need. [when asked how he managed to make his remarkable statues.]

Rodin, Auguste

36.

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

Pablo Picasso

37.

If we keep an open mind, too much is likely to fall into it.

Barney, Natalie Clifford

38.

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

Jackson Pollock

39.

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.

40.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

41.

Charity is in the heart of man, and righteousness in the path of men. Pity the man who has lost his path and does not follow it and who has lost his heart and does not know how to recover it. When people's dogs and chicks are lost they go out and look for them and yet the people who have lost their hearts do not go out and look for them. The principle of self-cultivation consists in nothing but trying to look for the lost heart.

Mencius (Mengzi Meng-tse)

42.

For the outer sense alone perceives visible things and the eye of the heart alone seeds the invisible.

Saint-Victor, Richard of

43.

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

Sand, George

44.

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

Duke Ellington

45.

Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere.

Apollinaire, Guillaume

46.

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

Parker, Dorothy

47.

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

48.

I can't criticize what I don't understand. If you want to call this art, you've got the benefit of all my doubts.

Charles Rosin

49.

You cannot kindle a fire in any other heart until it is burning in your own.