Motivational Quotes

Art

There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause.

- Zedong, Mao

Best Quotes about Art

A heart in love with beauty never grows old.

Proverb, Turkish

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

Picasso, Pablo

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

Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that you live, if you do.

Elizabeth Bowen

The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.

Blackie, Professor

[Abstract art is] a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

Al Capp

Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.

Twain, Mark

A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.

Proust, Marcel

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

Waugh, Evelyn

10.

The creation of art is not the fulfillment of a need but the creation of a need. The world never needed Beethoven's Fifth Symphony until he created it. Now we could not live without it.

Louis I Kahn

11.

The vitality of a new movement in Art must be gauged by the fury it arouses.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

12.

No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.

Ruskin, John

13.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

Pope, Alexander

14.

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

Driscoll, Louise

15.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

16.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

Jacob, Max

17.

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

18.

I shut my eyes in order to see.

Paul Gauguin

19.

It isn't enough for your heart to break because everybody's heart is broken now.

Ginsberg, Allen

20.

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

21.

Painting: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.

Ambrose Bierce

22.

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

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

23.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

24.

What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted. [Henry Iv]

Shakespeare, William

25.

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

Howe, Nathaniel

26.

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist's way of scribbling Kilroy was here on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.

Faulkner, William

27.

Two things are bad for the heart -- running up stairs and running down people.

Baruch, Bernard M.

28.

Abstract Art: A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

Capp, Al

29.

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

30.

Art never improves, but the material of art is never quite the same.

Eliot, T. S.

31.

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

32.

The people who make art their business are mostly impostors.

Picasso, Pablo

33.

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

Henry Ward Beecher

34.

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

35.

The heart is the best reflective thinker.

Phillips, Wendell

36.

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

37.

Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation.

Davis, Angela Y.

38.

Balance is the enemy of art.

Eyre, Richard

39.

Art -- the one achievement of Man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised.

Thurber, James

40.

I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.

Ruskin, John

41.

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.

42.

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

Brancusi, Constantin

43.

O, had I but followed the arts!

Shakespeare, William

44.

The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart.

Franklin, Benjamin

45.

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.

46.

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

47.

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

48.

Had we never lov'd sae kindly, Had we never lov'd sae blindly, Never met -- or never parted -- we had never been broken-hearted.

Burns, Robert

49.

There never was any heart truly great and generous, that was not also tender and compassionate.

Frost, Robert

50.

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

Cassady, Neal