Motivational Quotes

Art

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

- Simonides

Best Quotes about Art

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

The torments of martyrdom are probably most keenly felt by the bystanders.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Duke Ellington

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

Arp, Jean

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

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

Capp, Al

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

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

Bierce, Ambrose

In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent businessman.

Lewis, Sinclair

10.

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

11.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

12.

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

13.

With an apple I will astonish Paris.

Cezanne, Paul

14.

I can't criticize what I don't understand. If you want to call this art, you've got the benefit of all my doubts.

Charles Rosin

15.

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.

16.

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

Henry Ward Beecher

17.

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

Simonides

18.

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

19.

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

Ruskin, John

20.

Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors?

Edith Wharton

21.

The function of art is to make that understood which in the form of argument would be incomprehensible.

Brancusi, Constantin

22.

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

23.

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.

Eugene Delacroix

24.

It is the cause, not the death that makes the martyr.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

25.

All paths are the same, leading nowhere. Therefore, pick a path with heart!

Castaneda, Carlos

26.

The artist must conceive with warmth yet execute with coolness.

Winkelmann

27.

A heart in love with beauty never grows old.

Proverb, Turkish

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

31.

Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves they have a better idea.

Ciardi, John

32.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

33.

As the twentieth century ends, commerce and culture are coming closer together. The distinction between life and art has been eroded by fifty years of enhanced communications, ever-improving reproduction technologies and increasing wealth.

Bayley, Stephen

34.

The head learns new things, but the heart forever practices old experiences.

Beecher, Henry Ward

35.

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

Cocteau, Jean

36.

What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted. [Henry Iv]

Shakespeare, William

37.

Through art we express our conception of what nature is not.

Picasso, Pablo

38.

Artists must be sacrificed to their art.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

39.

All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.

Eckhart, Meister

40.

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

Shaw, George Bernard

41.

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

42.

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

Parker, Theodore

43.

The less you open your heart to others, the more your heart suffers.

Chopra, Deepak

44.

Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

Einstein, Albert

45.

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

Updike, John

46.

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

Stephen Nachmanovitch

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Gide, Andre

50.

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