Motivational Quotes

Art

In art as in love, instinct is enough.

- France, Anatole

Best Quotes about Art

I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none.

Ben Shahn

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

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

Cassady, Neal

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, while the heart of the fool is in the house of entertainment.

Bible

The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.

Gide, Andre

Art is the objectification of feeling.

Langer, Suzanne K.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

Balance is the enemy of art.

Eyre, Richard

It's not your painting anymore. It stopped being your painting the moment that you finished it.

Jeff Melvoin

10.

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

Varese, Edward

11.

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

12.

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

Proverb

13.

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

Cather, Willa

14.

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

Walt Whitman

15.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

16.

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.

Novalis

17.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

18.

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)

19.

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

Midler, Bette

20.

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

Duke Ellington

21.

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

22.

Art for art's sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orderly product which our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths, it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden... it is the best evidence we can have of our dignity.

Forster, Edward M.

23.

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.

Joseph Chilton Pearce

24.

It is impossible to give a clear account of the world, but art can teach us to reproduce it --just as the world reproduces itself in the course of its eternal gyrations. The primordial sea indefatigably repeats the same words and casts up the same astonished beings on the same sea-shore.

Camus, Albert

25.

Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

26.

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

Jacob, Max

27.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul. The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of Artist.

Poe, Edgar Allan

28.

If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently and replace it tenderly in its Master's presence. And even if you did nothing during the whole ofyour hour but bring your heart back and place it again in Our Lord's presence, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed.

Francis De Sales, St.

29.

As a general truth, it is safe to say that any picture that produces a moral impression is a bad picture.

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De

30.

Doubt obscures the true vision of the heart.

31.

Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother's womb.

Arp, Jean

32.

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

Suttner, Bertha Von

33.

The focus should be on the players. I'm here a long time. You can call me in the summer. Our seniors will be gone.

Smith, Dean

34.

The creative artist seems to be almost the only kind of man that you could never meet on neutral ground. You can only meet him as an artist. He sees nothing objectively because his own ego is always in the foreground of every picture.

Chandler, Raymond

35.

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

Burroughs, William S.

36.

Photography, fortunately, to me has not only been a profession but also a contact between people - to understand human nature and record, if possible, the best in each individual.

Nickolas Muray

37.

I would rather be ashes than dust. I would rather that my spark would burn out in a brilliant blaze than be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

London, Jack

38.

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

William Baziotes

39.

Faint hearts never win fair ladies.

Proverb, Danish

40.

Labor is the beginning, the middle, and the end of art.

41.

Those who write for lucre or fame are grosser than the cartel robbers, for they steal the genius of the people, which is its will to resist evil.

Dahlberg, Edward

42.

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

Miller, Henry

43.

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

44.

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

45.

Wherever art appears, life disappears.

Picabia, Francis

46.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.

Picasso, Pablo

47.

Art has never been made while thinking of art.

Niko Stumpo

48.

Art at its most significant is a distant early warning system that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen.

Mcluhan, Marshall

49.

Humanity is the rich effluvium, it is the waste and the manure and the soil, and from it grows the tree of the arts.

Pound, Ezra

50.

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