Top 100 Art Which Quotes
#1. He destroys that he might build; for when He is about to rear His sacred temple in us, He first totally razes that vain and pompous edifice, which human art and power had erected, and from its horrible ruins a new structure is formed, by His power only.
Jeanne Marie Bouvier De La Motte Guyon
#2. Religions are strange. They seem to be caught in some dream which they won't give up and trying to convince others of the truth of their dream, when in fact each person is having their own dream. Take what you need from the religions and just leave the rest, and be all right with that.
Art Hochberg
#3. In the world of reality the more beautiful a work of art, the longer, we may be sure, was the time required to make it, and the greater the number of different minds which assisted in its development.
Lafcadio Hearn
#4. What kind of judgment does one apply, then, to a work of art? I believe that there are four basic standards: (1) technical excellence, (2) validity, (3) intellectual content, the world view which comes through and (4) the integration of content and vehicle.
Francis A. Schaeffer
#5. The art of spreading rumors may be compared to the art of pin-making. There is usually some truth, which I call the wire; as this passes from hand to hand, one gives it a polish, another a point, others make and put on the head, and at last the pin is completed.
John Newton
#7. Art is not a mirror held up to society but a hammer with which to shape it.
Bertolt Brecht
#8. I know it's superficial, and you can't measure art, which is supposed to be up to the individual, but I've watched the Oscars since I was a baby with my mother.
Kerry Condon
#9. Why should not the camera artist break away from the worn out conventions and claim the freedom of expression which any art must have to be alive.
Alvin Langdon Coburn
#10. The cultural institutions which embody and enforce those interlocked aberrations-for instance, law, art, religion, nation-states, the family, tribe, or commune based on father-right-these institutions are real and they must be destroyed.
Andrea Dworkin
#11. Rhyme is the rock on which thou art to wreck.
John Dryden
#12. I think there is no work of art which represents the spirit of a nation more surely than "Die Meister Singer" of Richard Wagner. Here is no plaything with local colour, but the raising to its highest power all that is best in the national consciousness of his country.
Ralph Vaughan Williams
#13. The art of living consists in knowing which impulses to obey and which must be made to obey.
Sydney J. Harris
#14. People want stardom or fame or whatever - instant gratification as opposed to learning one's craft, which, when I was starting out, was the most important thing: that you are as fully equipped for your job or your art as possible.
Joshua Sasse
#15. He who has learned what is commonly considered the whole art of painting, that is, the art of representing any natural object faithfully, has as yet only learned the language by which his thoughts are to be expressed.
John Ruskin
#16. True creativity comes from enjoying ?the? moments, which then fulfill themselves, and a part of the creative process is indeed the art of relaxation, the letting go, for that triggers magical activity ...
Seth
#17. The most important quality of art and its aim is illusion; emotion, which is often obtained by certain sacrifices of poetic detail, is something else entirely and of an inferior order.
Gustave Flaubert
#18. Art is the creation of beauty; it is the expression of thought or feeling
in a form that seems beautiful or sublime, and therefore arouses in us some reverberation of that primordial delight which woman gives to man, or man to woman.
Will Durant
#19. Art is the means by which we communicate what it feels like to be alive - in the past, that was mixed up with other illustrative duties, but that was still its central function that has been liberated in the art called modern.
Antony Gormley
#20. Illusory universality is the universality of the art of the culture industry, it is the universality of the homogeneous same, an art which no longer even promises happiness but only provides easy amusement as relief from labour.
J.M. Bernstein
#21. A hint - don't paint too much direct from nature. Art is an abstraction! study nature then brood on it and treasure the creation which will result, which is the only way to ascend towards God - to create like our Divine Master.
Paul Gauguin
#22. Thou art never at any time nearer to God than when under tribulation; which He permits for the purification and beautifying of thy soul.
Miguel De Molinos
#23. Painting, which is essentially a rhythmic harmony of coloured spaces. Realism was the death of art. Great art should come from the harmony of two lines.
Arthur Wesley Dow
#24. The thorns of life had wounded him deeply. So he held fast to his art even when the gate through which it entered was shut.
Catherine Stella Schmidt
#25. The growth of populations has in no way increased the amount [of art], it has merely increased
the adeptness with which substitutes can be produced and packaged.
Raymond Chandler
#26. Contemporary novels can have a fleeting existence within the current multiplication of medias and the technological rapidity with which art is delivered and consumed. A cultural lacuna has opened, one that needs arresting.
Tom Cardamone
#27. First study the science, and then practice the art which is born of that science.
Leonardo Da Vinci
#28. Art is a barren route, of which glory is the oasis.
Henri Murger
#29. To great sections of the Church the art of worship has been lost entirely, and in its place has come that strange and foreign thing called the "program." This word has been borrowed from the stage and applied with sad wisdom to the type of public service which now passes for worship among us.
A.W. Tozer
#30. I was truly happy. But my state was not that of any ordinary satisfaction. It was a joy which stemmed directly from creative, artistic achievement.
Konstantin Stanislavski
#31. To introduce a new play only six weeks after another has been banned is also a way to speak one's piece to the government. It proves that art and liberty can grow back in one night under the clumsy foot which crushes them.
Victor Hugo
#32. I ... practiced all the arts of apology, evasion, and invisibility, to which procrastinators must sooner or later be reduced.
Maria Edgeworth
#33. The oldest theory of art belongs to the Greeks, who regarded art as an imitation (mimesis) of reality. The strength of that theory is that it explains the way in which art takes its materials from real life.
Leland Ryken
#34. That's what art is: escaping everyday normality, which wants to eat you alive.
Stefano Benni
#35. I have discovered the dance. I have discovered the art which has been lost for two thousand years
Isadora Duncan
#36. So I find every pleasant spot In which we two were wont to meet, The field, the chamber, and the street, For all is dark where thou art not
Alfred Lord Tennyson
#37. When we speak of the perfection of art, we must recollect what the materials are with which a painter contends with nature. For the light of the sun he has but patent yellow and white lead - for the darkest shade, umber or soot.
John Constable
#38. From the point of view of art, there are no concrete or abstract forms, but only forms which are more or less convincing lies.
Pablo Picasso
#39. Cartooning at its best is a fine art. I'm a cartoonist who works in the medium of animation, which also allows me to paint my cartoons.
Ralph Bakshi
#40. Which, in morals, leads away from superstition, Which, in politics, leads away from government, and Which, in art, leads away from Tradition.
Various
#41. But then people don't read literature in order to understand; they read it because they want to re-live the feelings and sensations which they found exciting in the past. Art can be a lot of things; but in actual practice, most of it is merely the mental equivalent of alcohol and cantharides.
Aldous Huxley
#42. Art is an expression of love, which you can see on the canvas.
Debasish Mridha
#43. I founded a club, which is called the Brutally Early Club. It's basically a breakfast salon for the 21st century where art meets science meets architecture meets literature.
Hans Ulrich Obrist
#44. Modern art spreads joy around by its color, which calms us.
Henri Matisse
#45. I wonder a lot about making things meaningful. You want to do meaningful work and make art, but you're making records, which is good, but you don't want to weight them - it's a very curious thing.
Doseone
#46. An artist can respect the backfield of fact before which every human being stands and choose not to address those facts.
Tom Bissell
#47. Creativity is an area in which younger people have a tremendous advantage, since they have an endearing habit of always questioning past wisdom and authority.
William Redington Hewlett
#48. You don't always have to show art in what's called a white box; you can have a kind of complexity within an exhibit which actually respects the art as well.
Zaha Hadid
#49. Troubadours travelled from town to town. They didn't really sing too good, which is the main reason they kept going.
Art Linkletter
#50. In literature and art memory is a synonym for invention. It is the life-blood of imagination, which faints and dies when the veins are empty.
Robert Aris Willmott
#51. Art is restoration: the idea is to repair the damages that are inflicted in life, to make something that is fragmented - which is what fear and anxiety do to a person - into something whole.
Louise Bourgeois
#52. Every separate sector of artistic creation has its own basic rules ... data which govern it. They are contained in the textbooks on these subjects. A professional knows the rules of the game as a matter of course so that he can achieve, in the upper strata above that, a high quality of art.
L. Ron Hubbard
#53. Most true artists care about music as a pure, passionate art form, but can get caught in the trap of the business. Which, sadly, has now become more important than the artist or even the music itself.
Rosanna Arquette
#54. There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.
Adam Smith
#55. The imagination is the vehicle of sensibility. Transported by the imagination, we attain life, life itself, which is absolute art.
Yves Klein
#56. The art of injudicious reading, the art of miscellaneous reading which every normal man ought to cultivate, is a very fine and satisfactory art; for the best guide to books is a book itself. It clasps hands with a thousand other books.
Maurice Francis Egan
#57. Today we say all art is political. But I'd say all art has to do with ethics. Which after all really comes to the same thing. It's a matter of attitudes.
Ingmar Bergman
#58. He that desireth to acquire any art or science seeketh first those means by which that art or science is obtained. If we ought to do so in things natural and earthly, how much more then in spiritual?
Robert Barclay
#59. Jesus said when you pray say "Our Father which art in heaven." He did not say "Our Judge which art in heaven". #grace #gospel
John Paul Warren
#60. Art is the funnel, as it were, through which spirit is poured into life.
Thomas Mann
#61. Any army which does not train to use all the weapons, all the means and methods of warfare that the enemy possesses, or may possess, is behaving in an unwise or even criminal manner. This applies to politics even more than it does to the art of war.
Vladimir Lenin
#62. What art ought to do is tell stories which are moment-by-moment wonderful, which are true to human experience, and which in no way explain human experience.
John Gardner
#63. If they who understand the utmost refinement of any art will enjoy the perfection of it in a manner superior to other men, will they not amply pay for that advantage in feeling more than other men the imperfection of it, which in the natural course of things must so much oftener fall in their way?
Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke
#64. A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.
Alexander Pope
#65. Art is the production of objects for consumption, to be used and discarded while waiting for a new world in which man will have succeeded in freeing himself of everything, even of his own consciousness.
Eugenio Montale
#66. Printing demands a humility of mind, for the lack of which many of the fine arts are even now floundering in self-conscious and maudlin experiments.
Beatrice Warde
#67. The real question is, Why do you feel as though that's emasculating? A man can't have a conflict? When you try to do art, it's how it lands on people, and hopefully some people will see it the way that I saw it, which is all of these awful choices come from the place of a man who's damaged.
Wendell Pierce
#68. A painting which does not take its inspiration from the heart is nothing more than futile juggling.
Caspar David Friedrich
#69. The purpose of activism and art, or at least of mine, is to make a world in which people are producers of meaning, not consumers, and
Rebecca Solnit
#70. And the prince who has relied solely on their words, without making other preparations, is ruined, for the friendship which is gained by purchase and not through grandeur and nobility of spirit is merited but is not secured, and at times is not to be had.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#71. For me, it's important to experience aesthetic shock, which sets in motion our imagination, our emotions, our feelings, and our thoughts. That's the purpose of a painting and of art in general.
Pierre Soulages
#72. Much comment has been given lately to the Code of the Samurai,
the Art of Death which makes our soldiers exult in self- sacrifice; but scarcely any attention has been drawn to Teaism, which represents so much of our Art of Life.
Okakura Kakuzo
#73. To Lawren Harris art was almost a mission. He believed that a country which ignored the arts left no record of itself worth preserving.
A. Y. Jackson
#74. Art was, for Poe, the only method by which one could penetrate the shapeless empirical world in the search for order, and
Edgar Allan Poe
#75. Reading thus introduces an "art" which is anything but passive.
Michel De Certeau
#77. What was any art but a mold to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself- life hurrying past us and running away, to strong to stop, too sweet to lose.
Willa Cather
#78. The art of a magician is not found in the simple deception, but in what surrounds it, the construction of a reality which supports the illusion.
Jim Steinmeyer
#79. Be fearless. What the hell, why not. You have nothing to lose except fear, which isn't yours anyway.
Art Hochberg
#80. I wanted my art to deal with very formal concerns and to deal with very material concerns, and to deal with antecedents and art history, which for me go very far beyond just the influence of African-American artists.
Rashid Johnson
#81. Our days weave together the simple pleasures of daily life, which we should never take for granted, and the higher pleasures of Art and Thought which we may now taste as we please, with none to forbid or criticise.
A.S. Byatt
#82. As all Nature's thousands changes But one changeless God proclaim; So in Art's wide kingdom ranges One sole meaning still the same: This is Truth, eternal Reason, Which from Beauty takes its dress, And serene through time and season Stands aye in loveliness.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#83. The attempt to divide art and politics is a bourgeois which says good poetry, art, cannot be political, but since everything is ... political, even an artist or work that claims not to have any politics is making a political statement by that act.
Amiri Baraka
#84. Planning is a skill and an art which takes a lifetime to master
Paddick Van Zyl
#85. Rather than comparing [war] to art we could more accurately compare it to commerce, which is also a conflict of human interests and activities; and it is still closer to politics, which in turn may be considered as a kind of commerce on a larger scale.
Carl Von Clausewitz
#86. In our life there is a single color, as on an artist palette which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.
Marc Chagall
#87. The art of conversation, or the qualification for a good companion, is a certain self-control, which now holds the subject, now lets it go, with a respect for the emergencies of the moment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#88. Art should be something like a good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue.
Henri Matisse
#89. O Lord, who art our guide even unto death, grant us, I pray Thee, grace to follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest. In little daily duties to which Thou callest us, bow down our wills to simple obedience.
Christina Rossetti
#90. I believe that both art and the human striving for cognitive comprehension are manifest forms of the grand game in which nothing more is stipulated than the game's rules; both art and actively solicited perceptions are but special cases of the recurring creative act to which we owe our existence.
Konrad Lorenz
#91. Usually in France we prefer to say bad things about the Nouvelle Vague, but I'm always impressed with its freedom and the fact of not making a film to give your opinion but just as a piece of art, which to me means the Nouvelle Vague.
Arnaud Desplechin
#92. Art is what gets communicated at a live show, which is why live shows are so amazing. To communicate in a different way is a mixed message. It devalues everything.
Alex Scally
#93. Nothing can be true which is either complete or vacant; every touch is false which does not suggest more than it represents, and every space is false which represents nothing.
John Ruskin
#94. From my point of view, which is that of a storyteller, I see your life as something artful, waiting, just waiting and ready for you to make it art.
Toni Morrison
#95. It ought to be illegal for an artist to marry. If the artist must marry let him find someone more interested in art, or his art, or the artist part of him, than in him. After which let them take tea together three times a week.
Ezra Pound
#96. It seems an odd idea to my students that poetry, like all art, leads us away from itself, back to the world in which we live. It furnishes the vision. It shows with intense clarity what is already there.
Helen Bevington
#97. Unfortunately, now in boxing people are only allowed to punch. In Judo, people are only allowed to throw. I do not despise these kinds of martial arts. What I mean is, we now find rigid forms which create differences among clans, and the world of martial art is shattered as a result.
Bruce Lee
#98. Now a work of art is a work of nature, but it is a work of human nature. It is a work of the mind: and it's a work of the mind in circumstances for an occasion which, to which, for which, and which it may be supremely natural and simple and effective.
"The Nature of Art" December 19, 1954
Frank Lloyd Wright
#99. It is almost as safe to assume that an artist of any dignity is against his country, i.e., against the environment in which God hath placed him, as it is to assume that his country is against the artist.
H.L. Mencken
#100. Wonder, and its expression in poetry and the arts, are among the most important things which seem to distinguish men from other animals, and intelligent and sensitive people from morons.
Alan Watts
