Top 100 Simple Art Quotes
#1. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we become morally and spiritually. We have learned to fly in the air like birds and swim in the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#2. And here it is that I miss my Watson. By cunning questions and ejaculations of wonder he could elevate my simple art, which is but systematized common sense, into a prodigy. When I tell my own story I have no such aid.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#3. Among the many answers I have found, I believe love is the most beautiful and simple art that reflects the beauty of life.
Mabel Iam
#4. It has taken me years of struggle, hard work, and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence.
Isadora Duncan
#5. ... That little narrative is an example of the mathematician's art: asking simple and elegant questions about our imaginary creations, and crafting satisfying and beautiful explanations. There is really nothing else quite like this realm of pure idea; it's fascinating, it's fun, and it's free!
Paul Lockhart
#6. It's a tricky art, working with them in their purest form," she mused. "Simultaneously simple yet infinitely complex." It sounded like my relationship with Adrian.
Richelle Mead
#7. The same person is coming through in a different medium ... My art is simple, direct and definite.
Grace Slick
#8. Every work of art has one indispensable mark ... the center of it is simple, however much the fulfillment may be complicated.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#9. A simple equation for the production of successful art work is lots of reference material plus lots of art supplies equals lots of painting happiness.
Robert Genn
#10. Luck is when preparation meets opportunity. I'll share the formula I learned while forging my way forward as a full-time painter for forty-four years. The steps all break down to one simple sentence: Make art that connects with enough folks for you to earn a splendid living.
Jack White
#11. 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
#12. 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
#13. I think there were some programs but in those days art programs were kind of basic. You would do drawing and simple collage type work. But at home I was beginning to get interested in doing my own thing as well. I'm not sure what inspired this, but I became very interested in decorating things.
Paul Smith
#14. Ireland is not at all a simple place, and in many ways it is spare and sad. It has no wealth, no power, no stability, no influence, no fashion, no size. Its only real arts are song and drama and poem. But Limerick alone has two thousand ruined castles and surely that many practicing poets.
Shana Alexander
#15. Real art is basic emotion. If a scene is handled with simplicity - and I don't mean simple - it'll be good, and the public will know it.
John Wayne
#16. My furniture, boxes, and turnings are simple, practical designs for everyday use. I love the grain and beauty of wood. Each piece of lumber is a work of art, after all, and I'd like to honor that gift and pass it on for someone else to appreciate.
Steve Miller
#17. But all categories of art, idealistic or realistic, surrealistic or constructivist (a new form of idealism) must satisfy a simple test (or they are in no sense works of art): they must persist as objects of contemplation.
Herbert Read
#18. The method of science depends on our attempts to describe the world with simple theories: theories that are complex may become untestable, even if they happen to be true. Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification-the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit.
Karl Popper
#19. There's another wonderful Italian expression: l'arte d'arrangiarsi-the art of making something out of nothing. The art of turning a few simple ingredients into a feast,or a few gathered friends into a festival. Anyone with a talent of happiness can do this, not only the rich.
Elizabeth Gilbert
#20. The real art is not to come up with extraordinary clever words but to make ordinary simple words do extraordinary things. To use the language that we all use and to make amazing things occur.
Graham Swift
#21. Any work of art makes one very simple demand on anyone who genuinely wants to get in touch with it. And that is to stop. You've got to stop what you're doing, what you're thinking, and what you're expecting and just be there for the poem for however long it takes.
W.S. Merwin
#22. There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#23. All spiritual strength for ourselves, all noble ties to one another, have their real source in that inner sanctuary where God denies His lonely audience to none. Its secrets are holy; its asylum, inviolate; its consolations, sure; and all are open to the simple heart-word, Thou art my hiding-place.
James Martineau
#24. For me to go casual is not to go simple. To me, it is to be able to bring back the art of tradition and the soul of French food and my interpretation of that.
Daniel Boulud
#25. I'm just a simple guy. I love beer, sex, and hockey. I hate liars, Sting, and art that doesn't have people in it. - Luke Almeida
Kate Meader
#26. I had one simple idea about telling friends about arts and technology events. People in the community suggested everything else to us, and that's our theme. We're really run by the people who use the site. We just run the infrastructure, and help out with problems.
Craig Newmark
#27. Chuse thy Cloaths by thine own Eyes, not another's. The more plain and simple they are, the better. Neither unshapely, nor fantastical; and for Use and Decency, and not for Pride. 75. If thou art clean and warm, it is sufficient; for more doth but rob the Poor, and please the Wanton.
Various
#28. Let us practice the fine art of making every work a priestly ministration. Let us believe that God is in all our simple deeds and learn to find Him there.
A.W. Tozer
#29. A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.
Albert Camus
#30. The moving accident is not my trade; To freeze the blood I have no ready arts: 'Tis my delight, alone in summer shade, To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts.
William Wordsworth
#31. Though Marcus' essay extends over 13 pages of small text, at its core is a very simple premise: Contemporary American fiction has lost its innovative edge and its interest in language as art, and Jonathan Franzen is largely, if not exclusively, to blame.
Jess Row
#33. The works of 'abstract' art are subtle creations of order out of simple contrasting elements.
Jan Tschichold
#34. I'm art. You're art. We are God's greatest works, simple as that.
Tracy Morgan
#35. From my point of view, any outstanding work of art is a fantasy insofar as it reflects the unique world of a unique individual. Art is not just simple arithmetic, it's a delicate calculus. Keep in mind the passion of the scientist and the precision of the artist.
Vladimir Nabokov
#36. Anyone,' Ayallac'h wiped his hands on a rag, 'can foretell the future. And everyone does it, for it is simple. It is no great art to foretell it. The art is in foretelling it accurately.' 'An
Andrzej Sapkowski
#37. The arts, as a reflection of human existence at its highest, have always and spontaneously lived up to this demand of plenitude. No mature style of art in any culture has ever been simple.
Rudolf Arnheim
#38. At that moment it was clearer to me than ever that a thousand books on the art of loving add nothing to a simple kiss, nor a thousand speeches on love to a single affectionate gesture.
A.G. Roemmers
#39. All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.
W. H. Auden
#40. The art of British Columbia's native Indians played a big role in inspiring my creativity ... the simplicity of the images, the graciousness of the lines and curves, and the emotional impact of the bright simple primary colours.
Joe Average
#41. The true Epicurean cultivates the capacity to take pleasure in simple things, while those around him chase pleasure in more things.
Luke Slattery
#42. Art has simple founding principles: Less is more, more or less; fill in the blanks with no filler.
Kevin Focke
#43. There is no simple formula for the relationship of art to justice ... In the end, I don't think we can separate art from overall human dignity and hope. My concern for my country is inextricable from my concerns as an artist.
Adrienne Rich
#44. I now require this of all pictures, that they domesticate me, not that they dazzle me. Pictures must not be too picturesque. Nothing astonishes men so much as common-sense and plain dealing. All great actions have been simple, and all great pictures are.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#45. Winnipeg has the largest collection of Inuit art in the world, I believe. They can be quite simple in a great way and often have sparse backgrounds and isolated characters. They often have a really great look to them.
Marcel Dzama
#46. Let's put it this way: art house theaters are vanishing. They have almost disappeared completely, and that means there's a shift in what audiences want to see. And they have to be aware of that and be realistic. It's as simple as that.
Werner Herzog
#47. It's wonderful to make a lot of money, to be able to take care of my family, to have the facilities I have and really support the people the studio's involved with. But at the end of the day I'm quite simple as an artist-it's really about the power of art.
Jeff Koons
#49. The simple act of having a camera, not a cell phone, but a camera-camera, there's a kind of a heightened perceptional awareness that occurs. Like, I could walk from here to the highway in two minutes, but if I had a camera, that walk could take me two hours.
Jerry N. Uelsmann
#50. What really matters is that there is so much faith and love and kindliness which we can share with and provoke in others, and that by cleanly, simple, generous living we approach perfection in the highest and most lovely of all arts ... But you, I think, have always comprehended this.
James Branch Cabell
#51. Art, in a sense, is life brought to a standstill, rescued from time. The secret of making it is simple: discard everything that is good enough.
James Salter
#52. There is a complete difference between art and the art market. Prices are high now for the simple reason that there are people are willing to pay them. The market dominates the art world today because at the moment collectors call the shots. Like everything else that won't last forever.
Michael Craig-Martin
#53. I think performance art comes from a simple place of wanting to express things beyond just sound.
Amanda Palmer
#54. And yet the point of view from which his ideas on art had sprung was a simple one: for him, literary schools did not exist; the only thing that mattered was the temperament of the artist; the only thing of interest was the way his brain worked, regardless of the subject he was treating.
Joris-Karl Huysmans
#55. In both the art and the business worlds, the difference between the amateurs and the professionals is simple: The professionals know they're winging it. The amateurs pretend they're not.
Amanda Palmer
#56. Art experts are unfailingly opposed to Art for the simple reason that they are interested in Art - but Art is not interested in Art. Art is interested in life.
Stephen Vizinczey
#57. Day by day thou art making me worthy of the simple, great gifts that thou gavest to me unasked - this sky and the light, this body and the life and the mind - saving me from perils of overmuch desire.
Rabindranath Tagore
#58. But in the end, music is ultimately an aural art, pure and simple.
Leo Ornstein
#59. I do not see any essential difference between abstract and primitive art. Both are simple and sincere. Naturally, we should not generalize in these matters: It is the individual artist that counts.
Vladimir Nabokov
#60. There is an art to the business of making sandwiches which it is given to few ever to find the time to explore in depth. It is a simple task, but the opportunities for satisfaction are many and profound.
Douglas Adams
#61. Human ingenuity," wrote Leonardo da Vinci, whose Vitruvian Man became the ultimate symbol of the intersection of art and science, "will never devise any inventions more beautiful, nor more simple, nor more to the purpose than Nature does.
Walter Isaacson
#62. The art which is grand and yet simple is that which presupposes the greatest elevation both in artist and in public.
Henri Frederic Amiel
#63. No one ever claimed that creating art was simple. But they failed to mention the mess.
F.K. Preston
#64. A main part of the struggle of art has been to make an art that is direct, simple, humane, unconnected with powers that be in their essence ... To the degree that it is connected with the bourgeoisie via the marketplace and so on is not necessarily an artist's problem.
Robert Motherwell
#65. The pursuit of truth is just a polite name for the intellectual's favorite pastime of substituting simple and therefore false abstractions for the living complexities of reality.
Aldous Huxley
#66. There are so may ways to kills yourself, they're just old-fashioned with their permanganate: do you think I'd take permanganate? I wouldn't want to burn my insides out and live to tell the tale as well: idiots! It's simple, I'd drown myself ... Why be in misery at the last?
Christina Stead
#67. The most important lesson I received from Conceptual art consisted in the recording of simple and obvious things, and viewing them under a whole new light.
Luigi Ghirri
#68. I want to take some quite incredible photographs that have never been taken before ... pictures which are simple and complex at the same time, which will amaze and overwhelm people ... I must achieve this so that photography can begin to be considered a form of art.
Alexander Rodchenko
#69. Between Margaret's fine edged art and Glady's rough simplicity, where did the greater feminine solace lie? True art, after all, is simple.
Angus Wilson
#70. For me, there was no great myth around the movies when I was a young child. My father was very simple about the whole thing. He did not consider cinema an art. Cinema was entertainment. Literature and music were art.
Jacques Audiard
#72. And luckily, therefore the good old days return. The traditional art of driving counts again, and it is all about good tactics, skills and reflexes instead of simple power.
Jacky Ickx
#73. Ah, art! Ah, life! The pendulum swinging back and forth, from complex to simple, again to complex. From romantic to realistic, back to romantic.
Ray Bradbury
#74. Can space break? I mean the space of art galleries. Over the past 100 years, art galleries have gone from looking like Beaux Arts salons to simple storefronts to industrial lofts to the gleaming giant white cubes of Chelsea with their shiny concrete floors.
Jerry Saltz
#75. I make big objects that are simple, bright and clear, kind of ironic but hopefully funny because I love the shapes, and I get inspiration from toys and books, and I believe in art for everyone.
Florentijn Hofman
#76. Imagination without knowledge leads no farther than the back yard of primitive art, the child's scrawl on the fence, and the crank's message in the market place. Art is never simple.
Vladimir Nabokov
#77. There is always a commanding and simple line around each head. Learn to have a love for the big simple line.
Robert Henri
#78. Probably only an art-worlder like me could assign deeper meaning to something as simple and silly as Tebowing. But, to us, anytime people repeat a stance or a little dance, alone or together, we see that it can mean something. Imagistic and unspoken language is our thing.
Jerry Saltz
#79. Comics as art. I do comics as comics, and my opportunity to tell stories. Simple. Basic. Let the characters have the excitement, not the package. That's where I come from.
Jaime Hernandez
#80. The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.
Ulysses S. Grant
#81. I became tired of submitting my art to a panel of corporate strategists who decide if it meets their standard of what gets into stores or not. It was quite simple for me: they act like judge and jury of my art, and that is unacceptable. I wanted to give it right to the public.
Chuck D
#82. Whatever a work of art may be, the artist certainly cannot dare to be simple. He must have a nature as complicated and as violent, as totally unsuggestive of the word innocence, as a modern war.
Rebecca West
#83. Art sometimes is as simple as nothing, and other times as mysterious as nature or a woman.
Jeet Aulakh
#84. Love, sex, food, friendship, art, play, beauty and the simple pleasure of a cup of tea are all well and good, but never forget that God/the universe is determined to kill you by whatever means necessary.
Chuck Lorre
#85. It is a great art to have an abundance of knowledge and experience - to know the richness of life, the beauty of existence, the struggles, the miseries, the laughter, the tears - and yet keep your mind very simple; and you can have a simple mind only when you know how to love.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#86. In war everything is simple, but it's the simple things that are difficult.
Carl Von Clausewitz
#87. Anyone interested in your product is not interested because of your state of the art features; they're interested because of the outcome it creates. It's a simple rule of buyer motivation. Consider
Rob Falcone
#88. My job as a writer is simple. Write a book I'm proud of, and present it as a gift to the world.
Some will love it.
Some will hate it.
That's the nature of art.
Kathleen Baldwin
#89. In the visual arts, particularly painting, I distrust all those abstractions, those artificial constructions. I have a very simple way of judging them: if I can do them, they are not art.
F. Sionil Jose
#90. I got the best advice I've ever been given; 'Punch him in the face as much as you can.' Keep it simple, so that's what I did.
Court McGee
#91. We have to support our local artists. It's just that simple. Otherwise, we will have no art.
Al Jourgensen
#92. It's been so long now and so much has happened that I am able now to look back with much less emotion and my take on Andy as an artist now comes down to a simple sentence: he made religious art for a secular society which is why it has so much appeal.
Bob Colacello
#93. Every article on these islands has an almost personal character, which gives this simple life, where all art is unknown, something of the artistic beauty of medieval life.
John Millington Synge
#94. The simple act of an ordinary courageous man is not to take part, not to support lies! Let that come into the world and even reign over it, but not through me. Writers and artists can do more: they can vanquish lies! ... Lies can stand up against much in the world, but not against art.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#95. Wabi means spare, impoverished; simple and functional. It connotes a transcendence of fad and fashion. The spirit of wabi imbues all the Zen arts, from calligraphy to karate, from the tea ceremony to Zen archery.
Shunryu Suzuki
#96. The key to finding happiness in this life is realizing that the only way to overcome is to transcend; to find happiness in the simple pleasures, to master the art of just being.
Brianna Wiest
#97. Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated.
Paul Rand
#98. Human nature is full of riddles and contradictions; its very complexity engenders art-and by art I mean the search for something more than simple linear formulations, flat solutions, oversimplified explanations.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#99. Good art, no matter how simple or casual-seeming, always carries a high density of choice.
Walter Darby Bannard
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