Motivational Quotes

Art

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

- Buckingham, Duke of

Best Quotes about Art

To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

The work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal.

Breton, Andre

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

Ginsberg, Allen

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

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

Art distills sensations and embodies it with enhanced meaning.

Barzun, Jacques

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

Barenboim, Daniel

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

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

10.

I'm the artist formally known as Beck. I have a genius wig. When I put that wig on, then the true genius emerges. I don't have enough hair to be a genius. I think you have to have hair going everywhere.

Beck

11.

Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

12.

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

13.

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

14.

Art is too serious to be taken seriously.

Reinhardt, Ad

15.

Art need no longer be an account of past sensations. It can become the direct organization of more highly evolved sensations. It is a question of producing ourselves, not things that enslave us.

Debord, Guy

16.

Not the glittering weapon fights the fight, but rather the hero's heart.

Proverb

17.

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

Jacob, Max

18.

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

Andre Gide

19.

The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.

Klee, Paul

20.

By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved.

Updike, John

21.

I can't work without a model. I won't say I turn my back on nature ruthlessly in order to turn a study into a picture, arranging the colors, enlarging and simplifying; but in the matter of form I am too afraid of departing from the possible and the true.

Gogh, Vincent Van

22.

The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.

Mailer, Norman

23.

Contrary to popular belief an artist is never ahead of his time, but most people are far behind theirs.

Varese, Edward

24.

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

Cioran, E. M.

25.

All art is an imitation of nature.

Seneca

26.

Art imitates Nature in this; not to dare is to dwindle.

Updike, John

27.

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

Conrad, Joseph

28.

It is either easy or impossible.

Dali, Salvador

29.

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

Pascal, Blaise

30.

In every veil you see, the Divine Beauty is concealed, making every heart a slave to him. In love to him the heart finds its life; in desire for him the soul finds its happiness. The heart which loves a fair one here, though it knows it not, is really his lover.

Jami

31.

Art the end result of perception, wisdom, intelligence, discipline, hard work, passion, luck, accident, and coincidence.

32.

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving. A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants.

Lao-Tzu

33.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

34.

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

35.

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

Pablo Picasso

36.

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

37.

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

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

38.

What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.

Paz, Octavio

39.

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

Paul Gauguin

40.

I am an artist I am here to live out loud.

Zola, Emile

41.

He bores me. He ought to have stuck to his flying machine. [On Leonardo Da Vinci]

Renoir, Pierre Auguste

42.

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

43.

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

Suttner, Bertha Von

44.

Have thy heart in heaven and thy hands upon the earth. Ascend in piety and descend in charity. For this is the Nature of Light and the way of the children.

Vaughan, Thomas

45.

What is art but life upon the larger scale, the higher. When, graduating up in a spiral line of still expanding and ascending gyres, it pushes toward the intense significance of all things, hungry for the infinite?

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

46.

Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.

Tynan, Kenneth

47.

It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture.

48.

Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me leave to do my utmost.

Isak Dineson

49.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

50.

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