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

One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honor or observation.

Scott, Sir Walter

Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort.

Shaw, George Bernard

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

One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is when we see its separate forms jumbled together.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.

Latimer, Bishop Hugh

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

Cassady, Neal

Wealth and want equally harden the human heart, like frost and fire both are alien to human flesh.

Parker, Theodore

You're confusing product with process. Most people, when they criticize, whether they like it or hate it, they're talking about product. That's not art, that's the result of art. Art, to whatever degree we can get a handle on (I'm not sure that we really can) is a process. It begins in the heart and the mind with the eyes and hands.

Jeff Melvoin

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

William Baziotes

10.

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

Cocteau, Jean

11.

Love can heal a broken heart.

12.

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

13.

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to the feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.

Gogh, Vincent Van

14.

Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.

West, Rebecca

15.

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

Buckingham, Duke of

16.

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

Driscoll, Louise

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.

In order for the artist to have a world to express he must first be situated in this world, oppressed or oppressing, resigned or rebellious, a man among men.

Beauvoir, Simone De

19.

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

Ruskin, John

20.

Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers; to be, for a secular, materialist culture, some sort of replacement for what the love of god offers in the world of faith.

Rushdie, Salman

21.

Balance is the enemy of art.

Eyre, Richard

22.

The artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business.

Berryman, John

23.

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

Frye, Northrop

24.

Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.

25.

Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it. Whoever has polished it more sees more -- more unseen forms become manifest to him.

Rumi, Jalal-Uddin

26.

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

27.

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

Baruch, Bernard M.

28.

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

Barney, Natalie Clifford

29.

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

Kael, Pauline

30.

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

Saint-Victor, Richard of

31.

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.

32.

The artist belongs to their work, not the work to the artist.

Novalis

33.

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

34.

This grandiose tragedy that we call modern art.

Dali, Salvador

35.

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

36.

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

Warhol, Andy

37.

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

Eliot, T. S.

38.

There is nothing enduring in life for a women except what she builds in a man's heart.

Anderson, Judith

39.

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.

Walt Whitman

40.

It is more difficult, and it calls for higher energies of soul, to live a martyr than to die one.

Mann, Horace

41.

If the Revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any tendency in art which, no matter how great its achievement in form, threatens to disintegrate the revolutionary environment or to arouse the internal forces of the Revolution, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, to a hostile opposition to one another. Our standard is, clearly, political, imperative and intolerant.

Trotsky, Leon

42.

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

43.

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

Stephen Nachmanovitch

44.

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

Gill, Eric

45.

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

46.

Is there not an art, a music, and a stream of words that shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life?

Wordsworth, William

47.

Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.

Barenboim, Daniel

48.

Whether you call my heart affectionate, or you call it womanish: I confess, that to my misfortune, it is soft.

Ovid

49.

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

Truman, Harry S

50.

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