Motivational Quotes

Art

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

- Cather, Willa

Best Quotes about Art

Art is a reality, not a definition; inasmuch as it approaches a reality, it approaches perfection, and inasmuch as it approaches a mere definition, it is imperfect and untrue.

Haydon, Benjamin

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

Franklin, Benjamin

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

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

Ruskin, John

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

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

Blackie, Professor

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

Warhol, Andy

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.

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

Ambrose Bierce

10.

The art of creation is older than the art of killing.

Voznesensky, Andrei

11.

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

12.

By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved.

Updike, John

13.

An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why.

Faulkner, William

14.

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

Eliot, T. S.

15.

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

Cassady, Neal

16.

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

Proverb

17.

If the wolf had ever come to our back door, he'd have had to bring a picnic lunch.

Anderson, Bill

18.

Many bad artists will tell you that art is life. There's a subtle difference however. You can turn your back on art

19.

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

Conrad, Joseph

20.

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

21.

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

22.

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

John Singer Sargent

23.

Painting is an attempt to come to terms with life. There are as many solutions as there are human beings.

George Tooker

24.

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.

25.

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

26.

Art for art's sake is a philosophy of the well-fed.

Yu Cao

27.

Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature.

Cicero

28.

In any society, the artist has a responsibility. His effectiveness is certainly limited and a painter or writer cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of non-conformity alive. Thanks to them the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts. That small difference is important.

Bunuel, Luis

29.

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

Waugh, Evelyn

30.

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.

Murdoch, Iris

31.

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

32.

Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and far from commanding we are forced to obey it.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

33.

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

Suttner, Bertha Von

34.

There is the falsely mystical view of art that assumes a kind of supernatural inspiration, a possession by universal forces unrelated to questions of power and privilege or the artist's relation to bread and blood. In this view, the channel of art can only become clogged and misdirected by the artist's concern with merely temporary and local disturbances. The song is higher than the struggle.

Rich, Adrienne

35.

In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.

Fischer, Ernst

36.

It is not the size of a man but the size of his heart that matters.

Holyfield, Evander

37.

With an apple I will astonish Paris.

Cezanne, Paul

38.

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

Parker, Theodore

39.

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

Walt Whitman

40.

It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance.

Midler, Bette

41.

Why should I buy expensive art when I can make my own.

Piero Milani

42.

Use your head and your heart, its not everything but its a start.

43.

I shut my eyes in order to see.

Paul Gauguin

44.

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

45.

I say that good painters imitated nature; but that bad ones vomited it.

Miguel de Cervantes

46.

Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.

Godard, Jean-Luc

47.

There must be hearts which know the depths of our being, and swear by us, even when the whole world forsakes us.

Gutzkow

48.

The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

Eliot, T. S.

49.

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

Cioran, E. M.

50.

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