Motivational Quotes

Art

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need. [when asked how he managed to make his remarkable statues.]

- Rodin, Auguste

Best Quotes about Art

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

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

Jeff Melvoin

Art is an experience, not the formulation of a problem.

Anderson, Lindsay

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

Joseph Chilton Pearce

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

Gide, Andre

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.

We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.

John F. Kennedy

The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.

Piet Mondrian

For us artists there waits the joyous compromise through art with all that wounded or defeated us in daily life; in this way, not to evade destiny, as the ordinary people try to do, but to fulfil it in its true potential --the imagination.

Durrell, Lawrence

10.

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

Bible

11.

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

Stephen Nachmanovitch

12.

This grandiose tragedy that we call modern art.

Dali, Salvador

13.

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

14.

An artist is forced by others to paint out of his own free will.

Kooning, Willem De

15.

Bad artists always admire each other's work. They call it being large-minded and free from prejudice. But a truly great artist cannot conceive of life being shown, or beauty fashioned, under any conditions other than those he has selected.

Wilde, Oscar

16.

Let each man exercise the art he knows.

Aristophanes

17.

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

18.

Repetition is the death of art.

Robin Green

19.

At every party there are two kinds of people -- those who want to go home and those who don't. The trouble is, they are usually married to each other.

Landers, Ann

20.

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

Bierce, Ambrose

21.

The brain can be easy to buy, but the heart never comes to market.

Lowell, James Russell

22.

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

23.

Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation.

Davis, Angela Y.

24.

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

25.

There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.

Pablo Picasso

26.

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

William Baziotes

27.

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

Murdoch, Iris

28.

A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.

Baudelaire, Charles

29.

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

Voznesensky, Andrei

30.

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting with the gift of speech.

Simonides

31.

Love can heal a broken heart.

32.

I shut my eyes in order to see.

Paul Gauguin

33.

Wherever art appears, life disappears.

Picabia, Francis

34.

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

35.

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

Barenboim, Daniel

36.

In our own hearts, we mold the whole world's hereafters; and in our own hearts we fashion our own gods.

Melville, Herman

37.

The more a man cultivates the arts the less he fornicates. A more and more apparent cleavage occurs between the spirit and the brute.

Baudelaire, Charles

38.

Good art however immoral is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise.

Pound, Ezra

39.

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

40.

The people who make art their business are mostly impostors.

Picasso, Pablo

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

44.

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

Gutzkow

45.

The heart will break, but broken live on.

Byron, Lord

46.

Look at every path closely and deliberately, then ask ourselves this crucial question: Does this path have a heart? If it does, then the path is good. If it doesn't, it is of no use.

Castaneda, Carlos

47.

A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.

Proust, Marcel

48.

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

Camus, Albert

49.

A painting in a museum probably hears more foolish remarks than anything else in the world.

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De

50.

Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.