Motivational Quotes

Art

As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn't make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting -- the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.

- Bellow, Saul

Best Quotes about Art

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

Weil, Simone

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

Proverb, Chinese

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

Paul Gauguin

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

Buckingham, Duke of

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

Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.

Cather, Willa

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

Ruskin, John

No sheath shall hold what finds its home in flesh.

Proverb

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.

10.

The artist is the opposite of the politically minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. The artist does not tinker with the universe; he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life.

Miller, Henry

11.

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

12.

When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art.

Chagall, Marc

13.

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

14.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

Pope, Alexander

15.

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

16.

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

Capp, Al

17.

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

Conrad, Joseph

18.

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.

19.

I will soon be going out to shape all the singing tomorrows.

Peri, Gabriel

20.

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

21.

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

22.

Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century.

Mcluhan, Marshall

23.

Only conservatives believe that subversion is still being carried on in the arts and that society is being shaken by it. Advanced art today is no longer a cause --it contains no moral imperative. There is no virtue in clinging to principles and standards, no vice in selling or in selling out.

Rosenberg, Harold

24.

If your heart were sincere and upright, every creature would be unto you a looking-glass of life and a book of holy doctrine.

Kempis, Thomas

25.

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

Miller, Henry

26.

I am more afraid of my own heart than the Pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great Pope, Self.

Luther, Martin

27.

Don't waste time trying to break a man's heart; be satisfied if you can just manage to chip it in a brand new place.

Rowland, Helen

28.

Seek not good from without: seek it within yourselves, or you will never find it.

Suttner, Bertha Von

29.

Whether a party can have much success without a woman present I must ask others to decide, but one thing is certain, no party is any fun unless seasoned with folly.

Erasmus, Desiderius

30.

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.

Burroughs, William S.

31.

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

32.

While I do not suggest that humanity will ever be able to dispense with its martyrs, I cannot avoid the suspicion that with a little more thought and a little less belief their number may be substantially reduced.

Haldane, John B. S.

33.

A Great man is he who does not lose his childlike heart.

Mencius (Mengzi Meng-tse)

34.

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

Truman, Harry S

35.

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

36.

A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.

Edmond de Goncourt

37.

Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off.

Cioran, E. M.

38.

The heart will break, but broken live on.

Byron, Lord

39.

Balance is the enemy of art.

Eyre, Richard

40.

It is a weakness that I lead from my heart, and not my head?

Diana, Princess of Wales

41.

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood -- never.

Camus, Albert

42.

When I am finishing a picture I hold some God-made object up to it -- a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand -- as a kind of final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there's a clash between the two, it is bad art.

Chagall, Marc

43.

This grandiose tragedy that we call modern art.

Dali, Salvador

44.

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

45.

In free society art is not a weapon. Artists are not engineers of the soul.

Kennedy, John F.

46.

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

47.

Impartial. Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.

Bierce, Ambrose

48.

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)

49.

Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.

Amy Lowell

50.

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.