1000 Best Art Quotes

Great art - or good art - is when you look at it, experience it and it stays in your mind. I don't think conceptual art and traditional art are all that different. Damien Hirst

My philosophy is that I'm an artist. I perform an art not with a paint brush or a camera. I perform with bodily movement. Instead of exhibiting my art in a museum or a book or on canvas, I exhibit my art in front of the multitudes. Steve Prefontaine

For me, there is very little difference between magic and art. To me, the ultimate act of magic is to create something from nothing: It's like when the stage magician pulls the rabbit from the hat. Alan Moore

My focus is my art, and that's what I love to do. I have to be really passionate in order to do something. I've turned down many things that I just didn't believe in. Beyonce Knowles

There are so many awful things in this world, but I wanted readers to share with me the small, beautiful, enjoyable things. Things like cute clothes, beautiful art and pretty flowers; items that are overflowing with beauty. If you just become obsessed with your own problems, you miss these things. When you discover them, you become happy. Novala Takemoto

In the big picture, architecture is the art and science of making sure that our cities and buildings fit with the way we want to live our lives. Bjarke Ingels

There is no must in art because art is free. Wassily Kandinsky

History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; art has remembered the people, because they created. William Morris

No idea stays pure. Even the flowering of art isn't pure. And the sun has spots. Gunter Grass

There's an axiom I live by: 'There is no art without politics.' You either choose to engage it, or you choose political apathy. This ties in with ideas around real-time performance and feedback. Chris Jordan

I am for the art of underwear and the art of taxicabs. I am for the art of ice cream cones dropped on concrete. Claes Oldenburg

Once an object has been incorporated in a picture it accepts a new destiny. Georges Braque

Through art and science in their broadest senses it is possible to make a permanent contribution towards the improvement and enrichment of human life and it is these pursuits that we students are engaged in. Frederick Sanger

I come from a real working class background, and I didn't know anyone sophisticated - except I saw Edie Sedgewick once at the Art Museum in Philly. She had these black leotards and little black pumps and this big ermine cape and all these white dogs and black sunglasses and black eyes. She was classy! Patti Smith

Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees. Marcel Proust

To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way. E. M. Forster

I don't like hype cluttering art. Skrillex

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary. Pablo Picasso

To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist. Robert Schumann

I don't want to be interesting. I want to be good. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it's simply necessary to love. Claude Monet

Violin playing is a physical art with great traditions behind it. Vanessa Mae

I have never denied my background or my culture. I have taught my child to embrace her Mexican heritage, to love my first language, Spanish, to learn about Mexican history, music, folk art, food, and even the Mexican candy I grew up with. Salma Hayek


Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still. Dorothea Lange

We have art in order not to die of the truth. Friedrich Nietzsche

I like to learn. That's an art and a science. Katherine Johnson

Politics separate men by bringing them together only superficially. Art and culture unite us in a common anguish that is our only possible fraternity, that of our existential and metaphysical community. Eugene Ionesco

What I didn't know was I was deeply attracted to the big space. David Hockney

I never know what I'm going to put on the canvas. The canvas paints itself. I'm just the middleman. Peter Max

Really I don't like human nature unless all candied over with art. Virginia Woolf

What other people may find in poetry or art museums, I find in the flight of a good drive. Arnold Palmer

I see no reason why the artistic world can't absolutely merge with Madison Avenue. Pop art is a move in that direction. Why can't we have advertisements with beautiful words and beautiful images? William S. Burroughs

Salad can get a bad rap. People think of bland and watery iceberg lettuce, but in fact, salads are an art form, from the simplest rendition to a colorful kitchen-sink approach. Marcus Samuelsson

When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear. Alfred Eisenstaedt

I think it's the pain and suffering that drive you to become an artist. The art itself should be the pain, sort of exorcising every demon and making you feel like you're a person that matters. Marilyn Manson

Simplicity is not an objective in art, but one achieves simplicity despite one's self by entering into the real sense of things. Constantin Brancusi

When that shutter clicks, anything else that can be done afterward is not worth consideration. Edward Steichen

I want to create the largest-ever participatory art project and highlight the concept of Shadow Philanthropy, where people help others create work without taking credit for it - through this we can really change the world. JR

Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over. Octavia Butler

Wherever art appears, life disappears. Robert Motherwell

If a man devotes himself to art, much evil is avoided that happens otherwise if one is idle. Albrecht Durer

Telling lies is a fault in a boy, an art in a lover, an accomplishment in a bachelor, and second-nature in a married man. Helen Rowland

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others. Albert Camus

If you go back to the Greeks and Romans, they talk about all three - wine, food, and art - as a way of enhancing life. Robert Mondavi

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

You cannot live to please everyone else. You have to edify, educate and fulfill your own dreams and destiny, and hope that whatever your art is that you're putting out there, if it's received, great, I respect you for receiving it. If it's not received, great, I respect you for not. Octavia Spencer

I'm not gonna give the British Government the joy of keeping taxing me. They don't tax art. And all my cars are just a collection of art. Jay Kay

The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure very much. William Hazlitt

Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art. Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

In an artwork you're always looking for artistic decisions, so an ashtray is perfect. An ashtray has got life and death. Damien Hirst

The art of the bird is to conceal its nest both as to position and as to material, but now and then it is betrayed into weaving into its structure showy and bizarre bits of this or that, which give its secret away and which seem to violate all the traditions of its kind. John Burroughs

In every work of art the subject is primordial, whether the artist knows it or not. The measure of the formal qualities is only a sign of the measure of the artist's obsession with his subject; the form is always in proportion to the obsession. Alberto Giacometti

The artist one day falls through a hole in the brambles, and from that moment he is following the dark rapids of an underground river which may sometimes flow so near to the surface that the laughing picnic parties are heard above. Cyril Connolly

The beauty of a finely worked object points to the beauty of the craftsmanship. The beauty of the craftsmanship points to the beauty of the name which was the source of the craftsmanship. The beauty of the name of the craftsman's art points to the beauty of the craftsman's attributes manifested in that art. Said Nursi

Is art influential? It can be - 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' rallied abolitionists, and 'The Jungle' provoked the demand for a safer food industry. Will Shetterly

The concept of commercialism in the fashion and art world is looked down upon. You know, just to think, 'What amount of creativity does it take to make something that masses of people like?' And, 'How does creativity apply across the board?' Kanye West

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together. John Ruskin


Music embodies feeling without forcing it to contend and combine with thought, as it is forced in most arts and especially in the art of words. Franz Liszt

The work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal. Pope Paul VI

I am not a therapist. I am not a spiritual leader. These elements are in the art: it is therapeutic, spiritual, social and political - everything. It has many layers. But art has to have many layers. If it doesn't, then forget it. Marina Abramovic

Once you learn to look at architecture not merely as an art more or less well or more or less badly done, but as a social manifestation, the critical eye becomes clairvoyant. Louis Sullivan

History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird. Joseph Conrad

No matter what is happening in life or in the world - war, natural disaster, poor health, pain, the death of loved ones - if existence is filled with art, music and literature, life will be fulfilling, a joy. Karen DeCrow

There's art in rhythm playing. Just find it. Make your own art. Find your place, and when it's your time to solo, it's your time to shine. Ricky Skaggs

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Oscar Wilde

Time extracts various values from a painter's work. When these values are exhausted the pictures are forgotten, and the more a picture has to give, the greater it is. Henri Matisse

I consider skateboarding an art form, a life-style and a sport. 'Action sport' would be the least offensive categorization. Tony Hawk

Oratory is the masterful art. Poetry, painting, music, sculpture, architecture please, thrill, inspire - but oratory rules. The orator dominates those who hear him, convinces their reason, controls their judgment, compels their action. For the time being, he is master. David Josiah Brewer

To me, architecture is an art, naturally, and it isn't architecture unless it's alive. Alive is what art is. If it's not alive, it's dead, and it's not art. John Lautner

I don't like to say I have given my life to art. I prefer to say art has given me my life. Frank Stella

Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is. Jackson Pollock

Trash has given us an appetite for art. Pauline Kael

I enjoy art, architecture, museums, churches and temples; anything that gives me insight into the history and soul of the place I'm in. I can also be a beach bum - I like to laze in the shade of a palm tree with a good book or float in a warm sea at sundown. Cherie Lunghi

People don't like contemporary art, but all art starts life as contemporary - I can't really see a difference. Damien Hirst

Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others. Jonathan Swift

I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. Jackson Pollock

Picasso said, 'Art is a lie that tells the truth.' What if you just want to tell the truth and not lie about it? Nicolas Cage

We must not show to all and sundry the secrets of the waters flowing in ocean and river, or the devices that work on these waters. Let there be convened a council of experts and masters in mechanical art to deliberate what is needed to compose and construct these works. Filippo Brunelleschi

I like to pretend that my art has nothing to do with me. Roy Lichtenstein

Politics with me isn't theater. It's performance art. Sometimes, for its own sake. Roger Stone

What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter - a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue. Henri Matisse

I paint with shapes. Alexander Calder

Recycling old buildings to show art is very important. Agnes Gund

What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become something which is only related to objects, and not to individuals, or to life. Michel Foucault

I spend much more time looking at art history and at different references to art than I do at actual objects. Jeff Koons

Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn't exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible. Ray Bradbury

When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art. Paul Cezanne

I think most people agree there is a component of skill in art making; you have to learn grammar before you learn how to write. Chris Van Allsburg

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art. Frederic Chopin

When thou art at Rome, do as they do at Rome. Miguel de Cervantes

I want to learn how to do balloon art and make dolphins. Martin Garrix

Sometimes, being different feels a lot like being alone. But with that being said, being true to that and being true to my standards and my way of doing things in my art and my music, everything that has made me feel very different... in the end, it has made me the happiest. Lindsey Stirling


Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love of humanity. Hippocrates

If Antarctica were music it would be Mozart. Art, and it would be Michelangelo. Literature, and it would be Shakespeare. And yet it is something even greater; the only place on earth that is still as it should be. May we never tame it. Andrew Denton

Telling stories with visuals is an ancient art. We've been drawing pictures on cave walls for centuries. It's like what they say about the perfect picture book. The art and the text stand alone, but together, they create something even better. Kids who need to can grab onto those graphic elements and find their way into the story. Deborah Wiles

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse. Winston Churchill

If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced. Vincent Van Gogh

The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things. Henry Ward Beecher

You cannot say, 'Go! Go! Rah! Rah! Good move!' People want some emotion. Chess is an art and not a spectator sport. Garry Kasparov

I'm not making art, I'm making sushi. Masaharu Morimoto

The art of life is to live in the present moment, and to make that moment as perfect as we can by the realization that we are the instruments and expression of God Himself. Emmet Fox

In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth. Patti Smith

The art of using deceit and cunning grow continually weaker and less effective to the user. John Tillotson

In France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport. Julia Child

The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill. W. Somerset Maugham

In the Raphael Room, the secret turned out to be that only some of the paintings were made by the great master; the rest were made by students. I had liked the ones by Raphael. This was a big jab for my self-confidence in my ability to appreciate art. Richard P. Feynman

The beauty one can find in art is one of the pitifully few real and lasting products of human endeavor. J. Paul Getty

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

The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box. Henri Cartier-Bresson

The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly. Aldous Huxley

I've never really had a hobby, unless you count art, which the IRS once told me I had to declare as a hobby since I hadn't made money with it. Laurie Anderson

The Internet is both great and terrible. As a source of information, a tool for delivering music and art, it's great. But spamming ads and piracy of music is terrible. It's stealing. Gary Wright

Great art is an instant arrested in eternity. James Huneker

My shadow in my art is one way I trace who I was and where I have been. My shadow and I have been on a journey for quite a while now! Angela Cartwright

There is nothing in the world of art like the songs mother used to sing. Billy Sunday

I don't listen to what art critics say. I don't know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is. Jean-Michel Basquiat

Painting is the most magical of mediums. The transcendence is truly amazing to me every time I go to a museum and I see how somebody figured another way to rub colored dirt on a flat surface and make space where there is no space or make you think of a life experience. Chuck Close

I could never figure out why photography and art had separate histories. So I decided to explore both. John Baldessari

Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it. Laurence J. Peter

To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them. Elliott Erwitt

Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one. Stella Adler

Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first. Arthur Schopenhauer


I experimented with fashion as it being more like art, allowing what I wore to express what I was feeling on the inside. Androgyny, rock culture, and grunge - they definitely had an effect on the things that made me feel cool and comfortable. Ruby Rose

People think that computer science is the art of geniuses but the actual reality is the opposite, just many people doing things that build on eachother, like a wall of mini stones. Donald Knuth

Visual art and writing don't exist on an aesthetic hierarchy that positions one above the other, because each is capable of things the other can't do at all. Sometimes one picture is equal to 30 pages of discourse, just as there are things images are completely incapable of communicating. William S. Burroughs

I have seen many storms in my life. Most storms have caught me by surprise, so I had to learn very quickly to look further and understand that I am not capable of controlling the weather, to exercise the art of patience and to respect the fury of nature. Paulo Coelho

Pictures deface walls more often than they decorate them. William Wordsworth

We were astonished by the beauty and refinement of the art displayed by the objects surpassing all we could have imagined - the impression was overwhelming. Howard Carter

I love having my hands in the dirt. It is never a science and always an art. There are no rules. And if it comes down to me versus that weed I'm trying to pull out of the ground that doesn't want to come out? I know I'll win. Matthew McConaughey

Pop Art looks out into the world. It doesn't look like a painting of something, it looks like the thing itself. Roy Lichtenstein

What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house. Edward Hopper

I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies. Le Corbusier

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

What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish. W. H. Auden

I started as a black and white photographer, but the colors I was seeing were just so lurid and compelling and awful at the same time. They got me looking at other contemporary art. I was gravitating more and more toward work that had visceral power, that wasn't necessarily about being beautiful but had some kind of horror in the palette. David Maisel

Science gave me a cosmic religious feeling, and I would get the same feeling when I was dragged to the Met and the Museum of Modern Art. Jon Kabat-Zinn

When I make art, I think about its ability to connect with others, to bring them into the process. Jim Hodges

I think music is the greatest art form that exists, and I think people listen to music for different reasons, and it serves different purposes. Some of it is background music, and some of it is things that might affect a person's day, if not their life, or change an attitude. The best songs are the ones that make you feel something. Eddie Vedder

Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art. Tom Stoppard

When we look back at the Mayans or ancient Egypt, we look at their art. Robert Wilson

I wanted to start a revolution, using art to build the sort of society I myself envisioned. Yayoi Kusama

Space is the breath of art. Frank Lloyd Wright

Why must art be static? You look at an abstraction, sculptured or painted, an entirely exciting arrangement of planes, spheres, nuclei, entirely without meaning. It would be perfect, but it is always still. The next step in sculpture is motion. Alexander Calder

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. John F. Kennedy

That's the motivation of an artist - to seek attention of some kind. James Taylor

Women are our most miraculous muse, an enchanted intangibility that encourages all art. CeeLo Green

If you know somethin' well, you can always paint it but people would be better off buyin' chickens. Grandma Moses

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook. William James

You can't do sketches enough. Sketch everything and keep your curiosity fresh. John Singer Sargent

I'm not really sure what social message my art carries, if any. And I don't really want it to carry one. I'm not interested in the subject matter to try to teach society anything, or to try to better our world in any way. Roy Lichtenstein

The art of living does not consist in preserving and clinging to a particular mode of happiness, but in allowing happiness to change its form without being disappointed by the change; happiness, like a child, must be allowed to grow up. Charles Morgan

In art as in love, instinct is enough. Anatole France

The art of war is of vital importance to the state. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected. Sun Tzu

In general it can be said that a nation's art is greatest when it most reflects the character of its people. Edward Hopper


The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart. George Sand

In this world, with thy earthly life, thou art under heaven, stars, and elements, also under hell and devils; all ruleth in thee, and over thee. Jakob Bohme

The best art is realized when you can share the experience of making of it and not just the presentation of it, so that the audience is part of the creation and not just part of the consumption. Then it becomes much more full-bodied and robust. Ava DuVernay

It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work. Henry Moore

The Dancer believes that his art has something to say which cannot be expressed in words or in any other way than by dancing. Doris Humphrey

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge. Albert Einstein

The goal of art was the vital expression of self. Alfred Stieglitz

I've read that the ancient Chinese art of feng shui can bring a sense of peace, well-being, and positive energy to a home - same as beer. W. Bruce Cameron

The Japanese have a wonderful sense of design and a refinement in their art. They try to produce beautiful paintings with the minimum number of strokes. David Rockefeller

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

Logic is neither an art nor a science but a dodge. Stendhal

The rainbow flag is beautiful because it's about love. The Confederate flag is ugly because it's about hate. It's pretty simple from the art level: beautiful versus ugly. Gilbert Baker

I am not strong on perfection. Jasper Johns

One eye sees, the other feels. Paul Klee

To a synthetic chemist, the complex molecules of nature are as beautiful as any of her other creations. The perception of that beauty depends on the understanding of chemical structures and their transformations, and, as with a treasured work of art, deepens as the subject is studied, perhaps even to a level approaching romance. Elias James Corey

I have the right temperament. I have the right leadership. I've built an incredible company. I went to a great school. I came out - I built an incredible company. I wrote the number one selling business book of all time: 'Trump: The Art of the Deal.' Donald Trump

Pictures must not be too picturesque. Ralph Waldo Emerson

I feel like science and art are cousins. Kate McKinnon

Performance art is about joy, about making something that's so full of kind of a wild joy that you really can't put into words. Laurie Anderson

Vitality is radiated from exceptional art and architecture. Arthur Erickson

Every painting is a voyage into a sacred harbour. Giotto di Bondone

Making sushi is an art, and experience is everything. Nobu Matsuhisa

We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art. Henry James

I love photography, and I love the art of photography. Helen Mirren

Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday. Don Marquis

What I wish to show when I paint is the way I see things with my eyes and in my heart. Raoul Dufy

I rarely draw what I see. I draw what I feel in my body. Barbara Hepworth

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think. Arthur Schopenhauer


What underlies great science is what underlies great art, whether it is visual or written, and that is the ability to distinguish patterns out of chaos. Diana Gabaldon

I started to make a study of the art of war and revolution and, whilst abroad, underwent a course in military training. If there was to be guerrilla warfare, I wanted to be able to stand and fight with my people and to share the hazards of war with them. Nelson Mandela

Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do. Donald Knuth

When I think of art I think of beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not in the eye it is in the mind. In our minds there is awareness of perfection. Agnes Martin

I think music is the greatest art form that exists, and I think people listen to music for different reasons, and it serves different purposes. Some of it is background music, and some of it is things that might affect a person's day, if not their life, or change an attitude . The best songs are the ones that make you feel something. Eddie Vedder

Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day. Friedrich Nietzsche

When you create art, the world has to wait. Will Smith

I was born in Seoul, South Korea; then I moved to New York City at the age of seventeen. In New York, I studied art and photography. I thought I would be a painter; then I saw Walker Evans when I was in college, and that had a great impact on me. Being in the darkroom making B&W prints was such a magical experience. Sung Jin Park

Spoken word poetry is the art of performance poetry. I tell people it involves creating poetry that doesn't just want to sit on paper, that something about it demands it be heard out loud or witnessed in person. Sarah Kay

Widespread state control over art and culture has left no room for freedom of expression in the country. For more than 60 years, anyone with a dissenting opinion has been suppressed. Chinese art is merely a product: it avoids any meaningful engagement. There is no larger context. Its only purpose is to charm viewers with its ambiguity. Ai Weiwei

If I can't be fishing or hunting, I want to be in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Jim Harrison

That's why people listen to music or look at paintings. To get in touch with that wholeness. Corita Kent

Women's art, political art - those categorisations perpetuate a certain kind of marginality which I'm resistant to. But I absolutely define myself as a feminist. Barbara Kruger

If you're a new artist, practice your art and share it. Set up shop somewhere, whether it's a street corner or a coffee shop. I got my start in a coffee shop that didn't even have live music. I wanted to play in coffee shops that did have live music, but I didn't have an audience. Jason Mraz

The art of bread making can become a consuming hobby, and no matter how often and how many kinds of bread one has made, there always seems to be something new to learn. Julia Child

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

Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal. Lionel Trilling

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing. Marcus Aurelius

In art the best is good enough. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another. Voltaire

The artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing. Eugene Delacroix

In winter, the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity. Summer is more wooing and seductive, more versatile and human, appeals to the affections and the sentiments, and fosters inquiry and the art impulse. John Burroughs

The best artists know what to leave out. Charles de Lint

It is after all the greatest art to limit and isolate oneself. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The demons you have are what motivate you to make your art. This is what drives the detective, this is what drives the painter, this is what drives the writer: a conflicting urge to forget pain and at the same time remember it and fight for some kind of justice. I know these powerful things are inside of me and everyone in some way or another. Tom Reiss

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection. Oscar Wilde

The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain. Lord Byron

Jazz music is America's past and its potential, summed up and sanctified and accessible to anybody who learns to listen to, feel, and understand it. The music can connect us to our earlier selves and to our better selves-to-come. It can remind us of where we fit on the time line of human achievement, an ultimate value of art. Wynton Marsalis

The job of art is to chase ugliness away. Bono

Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television. Woody Allen

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. Albert Einstein

Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. Ambrose Bierce

The roles of art, morality, religion, political faith, science itself are not to repair organic exhaustion nor to provide sound functioning of the organs. All this supraphysical life is built and expanded not because of the demands of the cosmic environment but because of the demands of the social environment. Emile Durkheim

The style of ancient Egyptian art is transcendently clear, something 8-year-olds can recognize in an instant. Its consistency and codification is one of the most epic visual journeys in all art, one that lasts 30 dynasties spread over 3,000 years. Jerry Saltz

Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse. Francis Bacon

More than art, more than literature, music is universally accessible. Billy Joel

The value of art is in the observer. Agnes Martin


I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things. Henri Matisse

Painting is the passage from the chaos of the emotions to the order of the possible. Balthus

Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle. Michelangelo

I realize that protest paintings are not exactly in vogue, but I've done many. Robert Indiana

Repetitiveness and discipline are the secrets of cake decorating. The art comes from the meticulous technique, the way it does for a dancer. Ron Ben-Israel

I love playing with makeup. Makeup has become a thing where it's an art form. It's not a thing where you use it because you need to feel beautiful or because you don't like the way you look. Zendaya

Professionalism in art has this difficulty: To be professional is to be dependable, to be dependable is to be predictable, and predictability is esthetically boring - an anti-virtue in a field where we hope to be astonished and startled and at some deep level refreshed. John Updike

What interests me most is when a work of art is no longer just an object, but also touches reality and life. Miuccia Prada

Food can be expressive and therefore food can be art. Grant Achatz

Music is an expression of individuality; it's how you see the world. All art is, for that matter. You take how you experience the world, interpret it, and send it out there - express it - whether it's sculpture, dance or singing. David Sanborn

What was any art but a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself - life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose. Willa Cather

I think - whether it's music, literature, sport, art, whatever you want - there's nobody who can stop us if we only apply ourselves with the singular objective of being the best in the world. Enda Kenny

Sculpture is an art of the open air. Daylight, sunlight, is necessary to it, and for me, its best setting and complement is nature. Henry Moore

When I was growing up as a little girl and as a teenager, I loved designing and making dogs' clothes and wanting to be a fashion designer. I took art and ceramics. I loved dance. Mae Jemison

I think of my peace paintings as one long poem, with each painting being a single stanza. Robert Indiana

Smiles come naturally to me, but I started thinking of them as an art form at my command. I studied all the time. I looked at magazines, I'd practice in front of the mirror and I'd ask photographers about the best angles. I can now pull out a smile at will. Tyra Banks

When you look at art made by other people, you see what you need to see in it. Alberto Giacometti

I was the least Pop of all the Pop artists. Robert Indiana

Stand-up comedy is an art form and it dies unless you expand it. Sam Kinison

Winners have the ability to step back from the canvas of their lives like an artist gaining perspective. They make their lives a work of art - an individual masterpiece. Denis Waitley

If my art has nothing to do with people's pain and sorrow, what is 'art' for? Ai Weiwei

The ability to make somebody feel something: that's art. However you look at it, whether you're an author, a painter, a singer, a rapper, a spoken-word artist - art. Wale

Women's books are kind of discriminated against. If a man writes a book about his family stories, people think of it as literature. If it's a woman, she's 'spilling her guts,' and it's not art. Erica Jong

If you're not trying to be real, you don't have to get it right. That's art. Andy Warhol

The art of communication is the language of leadership. James Humes

You don't take a photograph, you make it. Ansel Adams

Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul. Henri Matisse

The art of living well and the art of dying well are one. Epicurus

In art there are only fast or slow developments. Essentially it is a matter of evolution, not revolution. Bela Bartok

The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable. Sun Tzu

In life, as in art, the beautiful moves in curves. Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history. Robert Rauschenberg

India is a land of plenty inhibited by poverty; India has an enthralling, uplifting civilization that sparkles not only in our magnificent art, but also in the enormous creativity and humanity of our daily life in city and village. Pranab Mukherjee

The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body. Martha Graham

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process. Max Eastman

The difference between art about death and actual death is that one's a celebration and the other's a dull fact. Damien Hirst

It may be that the deep necessity of art is the examination of self-deception. Robert Motherwell

The greatness of art is not to find what is common but what is unique. Isaac Bashevis Singer

Journalism is always the art of the incomplete. You get bits and pieces. Anthony Shadid

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery. Francis Bacon

Life is a lot more interesting if you are interested in the people and the places around you. So, illuminate your little patch of ground, the people that you know, the things that you want to commemorate. Light them up with your art, with your music, with your writing, with whatever it is that you do. Alan Moore

The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization. Frank Lloyd Wright

London, thou art the flower of cities all! William Dunbar

Every picture shows a spot with which the artist has fallen in love. Alfred Sisley

Many a sin has sullied me in body and in soul because I did not restrain my thoughts nor guard my lips: nevertheless it is to Thee, O God of majesty and love, that I turn in my extremity, for Thou art the fount of mercy; to Thee, as quickly as I may, I speed: for Thou alone canst heal me; I take refuge under Thy protection. Saint Ambrose

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. Sun Tzu

Fast bowling is an art, like spin bowling. Kapil Dev

Most painting in the European tradition was painting the mask. Modern art rejected all that. Our subject matter was the person behind the mask. Robert Motherwell

The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it. Carl Rogers

The works must be conceived with fire in the soul but executed with clinical coolness. Joan Miro

For thousands of years, humans have used the art of storytelling to motivate and persuade. Kristen Soltis Anderson

My goal is to be one with the music. I just dedicate my whole life to this art. Jimi Hendrix

There are still some people out there who believe comic books are nothing more than, well, comic books. But the true cognoscenti know graphic novels are - at their best - an amazing blend of art literature and the theater of the mind. John Ridley


I haven't mastered the art of sitting and smiling. Ashley Wagner

Pitching is the art of instilling fear. Sandy Koufax

Well, Art is Art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know. Groucho Marx

The sadness of the incomplete, the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art. E. M. Forster

I think of real estate as a little bit like cooking or like art. Jerry Speyer

I think an artist's responsibility is more complex than people realize. Jodie Foster

Sculpture is the art of the hole and the lump. Auguste Rodin

When I work, and in my art, I hold hands with God. Robert Mapplethorpe

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

Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary 'real' world. J. R. R. Tolkien

So long as the system of competition in the production and exchange of the means of life goes on, the degradation of the arts will go on; and if that system is to last for ever, then art is doomed, and will surely die; that is to say, civilization will die. William Morris

When you walk down the street and see something in a crazy spot, there's something powerful about that. The street will always be an important part of getting art out there for me. Shepard Fairey

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art. Khalil Gibran

Summer is a great time to visit art museums, which offer the refreshing rinse of swimming pools - only instead of cool water, you immerse yourself in art. Jerry Saltz

Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life. Herman Hesse

If the universal is the essential, then it is the basis of all life and art. Recognizing and uniting with the universal therefore gives us the greatest aesthetic satisfaction, the greatest emotion of beauty. Piet Mondrian

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. Aristotle

Works of art often last forever, or nearly so. But exhibitions themselves, especially gallery exhibitions, are like flowers; they bloom and then they die, then exist only as memories, or pressed in magazines and books. Jerry Saltz

I'm afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning. Andy Warhol

The art of delegation is one of the key skills any entrepreneur must master. Richard Branson

You know how you feel somebody looking at you, and you turn, and somebody actually is? It's the same at an art gallery. You're looking at one portrait, turn around, and there is a work of art directly behind you. Because it's all energy. Every single thing has energy. Marina Abramovic

Impressionism; it is the birth of Light in painting. Robert Delaunay

The art of love is largely the art of persistence. Albert Ellis

In art, at a certain level, there is no 'better than.' It's just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it. Trusting that, just because of the way people are built and how interconnected we are, greatness will translate and symmetry will be recognised. Frank Ocean

The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe. Gustave Flaubert

In mathematics the art of proposing a question must be held of higher value than solving it. Georg Cantor

The artist's world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep. Paul Strand

Insight is the first condition of Art. George Henry Lewes

The building art is, in reality, always the spatial execution of spiritual decisions. It is bound to its times and manifests itself only in addressing vital tasks with the means of its times. A knowledge of the times, its tasks, and its means is the necessary precondition of work in the building art. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter. Alfred Eisenstaedt

The enemy of art is the absence of limitations. Orson Welles

It occurred to me that every work of art is a synecdoche, there's no way around it. Every creative work that someone does can only represent an aspect of the whole of something. I can't think of an exception to that. Charlie Kaufman

The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person. Abraham Lincoln

Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc. Friedrich Engels

The knowledge of God is the cause of things. For the knowledge of God is to all creatures what the knowledge of the artificer is to things made by his art. Thomas Aquinas

Life is short, the art long. Hippocrates

The perfection of art is to conceal art. Quintilian

Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man's starving! O. Henry

The screen is a magic medium. It has such power that it can retain interest as it conveys emotions and moods that no other art form can hope to tackle. Stanley Kubrick

Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul. W. Somerset Maugham

Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things. Henri Poincare

The task of art today is to bring chaos into order. Theodor Adorno

Feelings aroused by the touch of someone's hand, the sound of music, the smell of a flower, a beautiful sunset, a work of art, love, laughter, hope and faith - all work on both the unconscious and the conscious aspects of the self, and they have physiological consequences as well. Bernie Siegel

Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication. Simone Weil

The vitality of a new movement in Art must be gauged by the fury it arouses. Logan Pearsall Smith

Football is an art, like dancing is an art - but only when it's well done does it become an art. Arsene Wenger

Music is art, and once you become an artist, you need to learn how to accept criticism. Yanni

The world is a slightly better place for having improvisation in it than it was before. There's something about it that says something positive about the human spirit, that a bunch of people can get together and by following a few simple traffic rules can create art and can entertain an audience and can thrill and exalt each other. Del Close

Freedom of speech is, to all Americans, as oxygen is to the human condition. It is a right that has been irreversibly programmed into our hard drive. We are free to speak our minds. An artist's right to express him or herself as best suits their art, is the artist's prerogative and it is guaranteed. John C. McGinley

My hand is the extension of the thinking process - the creative process. Tadao Ando

There are times when the art world seems like a religious empire. There are great cathedral galleries and pilgrimage sites where treasured art pieces are displayed like holy relics, and this can certainly be a great pleasure on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Michael Leunig

There is nothing new in art except talent. Anton Chekhov

Hollywood is a special place; a place filled with creative geniuses - actors, screenwriters, directors, sound engineers, computer graphics specialists, lighting experts and so on. Working together, great art happens. But in the end, all artists depend on diverse audiences who can enjoy, be inspired by and support their work. Ryan Kavanaugh

Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs. Ansel Adams

There's design, and there's art. Good design is total harmony. There's no better designer than nature - if you look at a branch or a leaf, it's perfect. It's all function. Art is different. It's about emotion. It's about suffering and beauty - but mostly suffering! Diane von Furstenberg


I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them. Diane Arbus

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men. Plato

Whatever may be thought of my art, it is my own; and I would rather possess a freehold, though but a cottage, than live in a palace belonging to another. John Constable

If trees can create art, if they can encircle the globe seven times in one year, if prisoners can grow plants and raise frogs, then perhaps there are other static entities that we hold inside ourselves, like grief, like addictions, like racism, that can also change. Nalini Nadkarni

I went into the business for the money, and the art grew out of it. If people are disillusioned by that remark, I can't help it. It's the truth. Charlie Chaplin

Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further. Rainer Maria Rilke

With an apple I will astonish Paris. Paul Cezanne

I believe art is a connection, like passing on a flame. Wangechi Mutu

One might not think of light as a matter of fact, but I do. And it is, as I said, as plain and open and direct an art as you will ever find. Dan Flavin

The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge. Thomas Berger

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

I'm free. I just do what I want, say what I want, say how I feel, and I don't try to hurt nobody. I just try to make sure that I don't compromise my art in any kind of way, and I think people respect that. Erykah Badu

The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the germs of generality. David Hilbert

You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war. Napoleon Bonaparte

In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it. Ernst Fischer

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. Voltaire

In Art, man reveals himself and not his objects. Rabindranath Tagore

The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist. Novalis

In our fast-forward culture, we have lost the art of eating well. Food is often little more than fuel to pour down the hatch while doing other stuff - surfing the Web, driving, walking along the street. Dining al desko is now the norm in many workplaces. All of this speed takes a toll. Obesity, eating disorders and poor nutrition are rife. Carl Honore

The arts are an even better barometer of what is happening in our world than the stock market or the debates in congress. Hendrik Willem Van Loon

Instead of art I have taught philosophy. Though technique for me is a big word, I never have taught how to paint. All my doing was to make people to see. Josef Albers

The business of art is to reveal the relation between man and his environment. D. H. Lawrence

It is my art. I am better at it than I ever was. And I will do it as long as I can. When you reach a certainage you can slough off what is unnecessary and concentrate on what is. And why not? Arthur Miller

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure. Dale Carnegie

It's a melting pot, southern Africa. You find these cultural collisions that result in art and music, and it's pretty amazing . Dave Matthews

The history of art is the history of revivals. Samuel Butler

Just as pure abstract art is not dogmatic, neither is it decorative. Piet Mondrian

The marble not yet carved can hold the form of every thought the greatest artist has. Michelangelo

Life is the art of being well deceived; and in order that the deception may succeed it must be habitual and uninterrupted. William Hazlitt

The person who knows one thing and does it better than anyone else, even if it only be the art of raising lentils, receives the crown he merits. If he raises all his energy to that end, he is a benefactor of mankind and its rewarded as such. Og Mandino

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art. Ralph Waldo Emerson

The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed - it is a process of elimination. Elbert Hubbard

Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art. Will Durant

Maturity implies otherness... The art of living is the art of living with. Julius Gordon

The temple of art is built in words. Josiah Gilbert Holland

Figure skating is a mixture of art and sport. Katarina Witt

Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it. Dwight D. Eisenhower

The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts. Henry Miller

For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments' sake. Walter Pater

Music is the art of the prophets and the gift of God. Martin Luther

The worse my drawings were, the more beautiful did the originals appear. John James Audubon

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival. C. S. Lewis

My imagination can picture no fairer happiness than to continue living for art. Clara Schumann

There are whole months at a time when my head is so full of ideas that I wake in the middle of the night and lie in the dark telling myself stories. There are also long, dark nights when I just know I'll never write another word: I'm finished, empty, a husk... Oh dear, yes, twitch, yawn, how I've suffered insomnia for my art. Debi Gliori

Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world. Edward Hopper

Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world. Martin Luther

There is nothing so beautiful as the free forest. To catch a fish when you are hungry, cut the boughs of a tree, make a fire to roast it, and eat it in the open air, is the greatest of all luxuries. I would not stay a week pent up in cities if it were not for my passion for art. Edmonia Lewis

Humility is becoming a lost art, but it's not difficult to practice. It means that you realize that others have been involved in your success. Harvey Mackay

Nothing is art if it does not come from nature. Antoni Gaudi

There's not a lot of art forms where you can control your presentation and your ideas. Gerard Way

To an engineer, good enough means perfect. With an artist, there's no such thing as perfect. Alexander Calder

I cry out for order and find it only in art. Helen Hayes

Paint the essential character of things. Camille Pissarro

To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event. Henri Cartier-Bresson

I think that's always the goal of art, is to make people ask themselves questions. Chance The Rapper

So vast is art, so narrow human wit. Alexander Pope

When you're a filmmaker you're part of a very expensive art form. Kevin Smith

In a democracy, you need to have a strong judicial system. You need freedom of speech, you need art, and you need a free press. Tzipi Livni

I'm giving into my tendency to want to blur and blend the lines between art and life, and privacy and sharing. Lia Ices

The art of effective listening is essential to clear communication, and clear communication is necessary to management success. James Cash Penney

You should never feel afraid to become a piece of art. It's exhilarating. Nicki Minaj

I don't think about art when I'm working. I try to think about life. Jean-Michel Basquiat

Painting seems like some kind of peculiar miracle that I need to have again and again. Philip Guston

The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity. Douglas Horton

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine. Ralph Waldo Emerson

The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web. Pablo Picasso

In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love. Marc Chagall

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Kurt Vonnegut

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art. Susan Sontag

The Chinese art world does not exist. In a society that restricts individual freedoms and violates human rights, anything that calls itself creative or independent is a pretence. It is impossible for a totalitarian society to create anything with passion and imagination. Ai Weiwei

It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture. Tom Stoppard

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure. Mikhail Baryshnikov

It's an art to live with pain... mix the light into gray. Eddie Vedder

The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public. Paul Gauguin


Just as the science and art of agriculture depend upon chemistry and botany, so the art of education depends upon physiology and psychology. Edward Thorndike

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises. Samuel Butler

The philistine provides the best definition of art. Anything that makes him rage is first class. Louis Dudek

Love the art in yourself and not yourself in the art. Constantin Stanislavski

The show business has all phases and grades of dignity, from the exhibition of a monkey to the exposition of that highest art in music or the drama which secures for the gifted artists a world-wide fame princes well might envy. P. T. Barnum

Every time a student walks past a really urgent, expressive piece of architecture that belongs to his college, it can help reassure him that he does have that mind, does have that soul. Louis Kahn

Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability. William Osler

The terrifying and edible beauty of Art Nouveau architecture. Salvador Dali

Film editing is now something almost everyone can do at a simple level and enjoy it, but to take it to a higher level requires the same dedication and persistence that any art form does. Walter Murch

Mournful and yet grand is the destiny of the artist. Franz Liszt

The walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds. Theo Jansen

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication. Friedrich Nietzsche

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art. Charlie Parker

The worst state of affairs is when science begins to concern itself with art. Paul Klee

From the neck up is where you win or lose the battle. It's the art of war. You have to lock yourself in and strategise your mindset. That's why boxers go to training camps: to shut down the noise and really zone in. Anthony Joshua

My lens and my personality, it's just fluid. The art isn't just in one place. Petra Collins

There hasn't been any art yet. Art is just beginning. Constantin Brancusi

Great art picks up where nature ends. Marc Chagall

No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters. Edgar Degas

There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept. Ansel Adams

I always feel that art in general and acting in particular should make the audience a little uncomfortable, to slap them and wake them up. Antonio Banderas

Nothing retains less of desire in art, in science, than this will to industry, booty, possession. Andre Breton

There's nothing more superficial to do than to paint a beautiful woman. The most beautiful portraits in art were of ugly women. If you paint Brigitte Bardot, it's a disaster. Sunsets, you have to stay away from sunsets. You paint a sunset, you are in great danger. Fernando Botero

I believe in originality, primarily. However, it's important to know what there has been before to aim in that direction. Art history informs us. It informs our mind. I like to look at books, exhibitions, paintings, as a computer, subconsciously taking on information. Philip Treacy

One must always draw, draw with the eyes, when one cannot draw with a pencil. Balthus

To be an artist includes much; one must possess many gifts - absolute gifts - which have not been acquired by one's own effort. And, moreover, to succeed, the artist much possess the courageous soul. Kate Chopin

I decided on the spot that I would be an artist, and I assure you, it was no ordinary artist I had in mind. Henry Ossawa Tanner

Painting and writing are solitary arts. Conrad Hall

To my mind the old masters are not art; their value is in their scarcity. Thomas A. Edison

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist. Albert Einstein

I feel like skateboarding is as much of a sport as a lifestyle, and an art form, so there's so much that that transcends in terms of music, fashion, and entertainment. Tony Hawk

Performance art is about joy, about making something that's so full of kind of a wild joy that you really can't put into words. Laurie Anderson

Vulnerability is the essence of romance. It's the art of being uncalculated, the willingness to look foolish, the courage to say, 'This is me, and I'm interested in you enough to show you my flaws with the hope that you may embrace me for all that I am but, more important, all that I am not.' Ashton Kutcher

If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye. Honore de Balzac

The art is long, life is short. Hippocrates

Writing stopped being fun when I discovered the difference between good writing and bad and, even more terrifying, the difference between it and true art. And after that, the whip came down. Truman Capote

In science, if you don't do it, somebody else will. Whereas in art, if Beethoven didn't compose the 'Ninth Symphony,' no one else before or after is going to compose the 'Ninth Symphony' that he composed; no one else is going to paint 'Starry Night' by van Gogh. Neil deGrasse Tyson

In art, the obvious is a sin. Edward Dmytryk

The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work. Emile Zola

I hope to live all my life for my art, without abandoning my principles one iota. Gustave Courbet

Please bear in mind that my observations and thoughts are the outcome of my own unaided impulse and curiosity alone; for, besides myself, in our town there be no philosophers who practice this art, so pray, take not amiss my poor pen and the liberty I here take in setting down my random notions. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

The basis of art is truth, both in matter and in mode. Flannery O'Connor

Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize. James Joyce

The cinema is not a craft. It is an art. It does not mean teamwork. One is always alone on the set as before the blank page. And to be alone ... means to ask questions. And to make films means to answer them. Jean-Luc Godard

It is not in life, but in art that self-fulfillment is to be found. Wilson Mizner

The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude. Friedrich Nietzsche

It's clever, but is it Art? Rudyard Kipling

The hours I spend with you I look upon as sort of a perfumed garden, a dim twilight, and a fountain singing to it. You and you alone make me feel that I am alive. Other men it is said have seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough. George Edward Moore

Land really is the best art. Andy Warhol

The minute there's a map, there is no art. Paint by numbers is not art. Paint by numbers is a mechanical activity. Seth Godin

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser. John W. Gardner

The principle of art is to pause, not bypass. Jerzy Kosinski

Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling. Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

Every work of art is the child of its age and, in many cases, the mother of our emotions. It follows that each period of culture produces an art of its own which can never be repeated. Wassily Kandinsky

Medicine is not only a science; it is also an art. It does not consist of compounding pills and plasters; it deals with the very processes of life, which must be understood before they may be guided. Paracelsus

The terrifying and edible beauty of Art Nouveau architecture. Salvador Dali


Filmmaking is a completely imperfect art form that takes years and, over those years, the movie tells you what it is. Mistakes happen, accidents happen and true great films are the results of those mistakes and the decisions that those directors make during those moments. Jason Reitman

Movies become art after editing. Instead of just reproducing reality, they juxtapose images of it. That implies expression; that's art. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

The way I make art - the way a lot of people make art - is as an extension of language and communication, where references are incredibly important. Shepard Fairey

For as long as I can remember I have suffered from a deep feeling of anxiety which I have tried to express in my art. Edvard Munch

My art is an attempt to reach beyond the surface appearance. I want to see growth in wood, time in stone, nature in a city, and I do not mean its parks but a deeper understanding that a city is nature too-the ground upon which it is built, the stone with which it is made. Andy Goldsworthy

The writer, when he is also an artist, is someone who admits what others don't dare reveal. Elia Kazan

Gardening always has been an art, essentially. Robert Irwin

My life is a monument to procrastination, to the art of putting things off until later, or much later, or possibly never. Craig Brown

There have to be moments when you glimpse something decent, something life-affirming even in the most twisted character. That's where the real art lies. See, I always suspect characters who are painted as lovely, decent human beings. I would always question where the darkness lies. Martin McDonagh

Great artists suffer for the people. Marvin Gaye

No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone. Oscar Wilde

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible. Samuel Johnson

I always like to believe that my work is about the expansion of the possibilities of the viewer. So if you have a sense of a heightened situation where there's an excitement, a physical excitement and an intellectual stimulation, there's just this sense of expansion. Because that's where the art happens. Inside the viewer. Jeff Koons

O, thou art fairer than the evening air clad in the beauty of a thousand stars. Christopher Marlowe

They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art. Charlie Parker

I believe in the city as a natural human environment, but we must humanize it. It's art that will re-define public space in the 21st Century. We can make our cities diverse, inspirational places by putting art, dance and performance in all its forms into the matrix of street life. Antony Gormley

One must do the same subject over again ten times, a hundred times. In art nothing must resemble an accident, not even movement. Edgar Degas

To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams. Giorgio de Chirico

I decided on the spot that I would be an artist, and I assure you, it was no ordinary artist I had in mind. Henry Ossawa Tanner

Painting is a nail to which I fasten my ideas. Georges Braque

To my mind, it is the duty of the younger Negro artist, if he accepts any duties at all from outsiders, to change through the force of his art that old whispering 'I want to be white,' hidden in the aspirations of his people, to 'Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro - and beautiful!' Langston Hughes

I don't think art is propaganda; it should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further. It celebrates humanity instead of manipulating it. Keith Haring

Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic. Ambrose Bierce

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason. Albert Camus

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for. Georgia O'Keeffe

Personality is everything in art and poetry. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We are all hungry and thirsty for concrete images. Abstract art will have been good for one thing: to restore its exact virginity to figurative art. Salvador Dali

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.' Edgar Allan Poe

I love putting the music together. It's like art. Erykah Badu

Programming is the art of algorithm design and the craft of debugging errant code. Ellen Ullman

What is art but a way of seeing? Saul Bellow

In a storm, I think, 'What if the gospel be not true? Then thou art, of all men, most foolish. For what has thou given up thy goods, thy ease, thy friends, thy reputation, thy country, thy life?' John Wesley

The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out. Walter Benjamin

It is not up to me whether I win or lose. Ultimately, this might not be my day. And it is that philosophy towards sports, something that I really truly live by. I am emotional. I want to win. I am hungry. I am a competitor. I have that fire. But deep down, I truly enjoy the art of competing so much more than the result. Apolo Ohno

Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize. James Joyce

The concept of commercialism in the fashion and art world is looked down upon. You know, just to think, 'What amount of creativity does it take to make something that masses of people like?' And, 'How does creativity apply across the board?' Kanye West

All art is but imitation of nature. Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Because advertising and marketing is an art, the solution to each new problem or challenge should begin with a blank canvas and an open mind, not with the nervous borrowings of other people's mediocrities. That's precisely what 'trends' are - a search for something 'safe' - and why a reliance on them leads to oblivion. George Lois

I really do believe that art changes the landscape of the world. Marc Jacobs

The excellency of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeable evaporate. John Keats

It's very important that we re-learn the art of resting and relaxing. Not only does it help prevent the onset of many illnesses that develop through chronic tension and worrying; it allows us to clear our minds, focus, and find creative solutions to problems. Thich Nhat Hanh

The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art. Leonardo da Vinci

Language is a social art. Willard Van Orman Quine

The mission of art is to represent nature not to imitate her. William Morris Hunt

Like art, revolutions come from combining what exists into what has never existed before. Gloria Steinem

The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke. Jerzy Kosinski

Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide. Ben Okri

The state of female artists is very good. But the very definition of art has been biased in that 'art' was what men did in a European tradition and 'crafts' were what women and natives did. But it's actually all the same. Gloria Steinem

A work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge, and becomes a portable object or surface disengaged from the outside world. Robert Smithson

Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love. Claude Monet

Mild autism can give you a genius like Einstein. If you have severe autism, you could remain nonverbal. You don't want people to be on the severe end of the spectrum. But if you got rid of all the autism genetics, you wouldn't have science or art. All you would have is a bunch of social 'yak yaks.' Temple Grandin

The true art of memory is the art of attention. Samuel Johnson

A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears. Gertrude Stein

Filmmaking is a huge privilege; it's not brain surgery. It's art, and art is supposed to be an enjoyable process, and it is an enjoyable experience for me. Lake Bell

Murals in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums. Peter De Vries

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards. Anatole France

Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered. Al Capp

For me, art doesn't stop at the gallery space. Petra Collins

My art is not limited to the songs I create but also to the reaction it creates. I like to sit back and look at the whole thing as if it's a tornado that I'm controlling. It's creating chaos. When you create chaos, ideas are turned upside down, and everybody looks at things in a different way. Marilyn Manson

There are no categories in contemporary art. There are no rules. Artists are given the freedom to make and create whatever they please and call it whatever they please. I identify with that system, or lack of system, much more than I do the landscape of contemporary publishing. James Frey

Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it. Friedrich Nietzsche

Good art is art that allows you to enter it from a variety of angles and to emerge with a variety of views. Mary Schmich

My love of fine art increased - the more of it I saw, the more of it I wanted to see. J. Paul Getty

There is a deep question whether the possible meanings that emerge from an effort to explain the experience of art may not mask the real meanings of a work of art. Jerome Bruner

Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century. Marshall McLuhan

He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars: general Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer, for Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars. William Blake

No difficulty can discourage, no obstacle dismay, no trouble dishearten the man who has acquired the art of being alive. Difficulties are but dares of fate, obstacles but hurdles to try his skill, troubles but bitter tonics to give him strength; and he rises higher and looms greater after each encounter with adversity. Ella Wheeler Wilcox

There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain. Georges Braque


Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art. William Bernbach

I always like to see if the art across the street is better than mine. Andy Warhol

Obviously, the cinematography of films is art, just as a still shot can be art. If I'm watching a Wes Anderson movie, the colour palettes alone, and the way they're painted, could be art. With music, you're a little bit limited, of course, because it's only audio. Frank Ocean

Thirty-three-years-old, still creating art. It's rage, it's creativity, it's pain, it's hurt, but it's the opportunity to still have my voice get out there through music. Kanye West

Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don't have for something they don't need. Will Rogers

I believe that an art exhibition can be engaging, fun and deeply intellectually satisfying and serious. These are not contradictory concepts in art. Jeffrey Deitch

One of the most amazing things about mathematics is the people who do math aren't usually interested in application, because mathematics itself is truly a beautiful art form. It's structures and patterns, and that's what we love, and that's what we get off on. Danica McKellar

To create a work of art is to create the world. Wassily Kandinsky

Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century. Marshall McLuhan

I did study the art of being a barber because I wanted to figure out what my routine would be. Do you start in the front or back? Top or bottom? Swivel the chair or walk around? What I did discover is there's no such thing as the perfect haircut! Sean Patrick Thomas

Painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing things. Gustave Courbet

To paint is a possessing rather than a picturing. Philip Guston

All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks. Gilbert K. Chesterton

I don't think geometric art is... I don't like to call it that. I don't think it's any more pure than pop art or anything else. It doesn't have anything to do with purity. Donald Judd

Parks are works of art just as a painting or sculpture is. Thomas Hoving

Trying to force creativity is never good. Sarah McLachlan

All art is a struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous. Iris Murdoch

I grew up thinking art was pictures until I got into music and found I was an artist and didn't paint. Chuck Berry

Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art. Ambrose Bierce

We are only beginning to learn what to say in a photograph. The world we live in is a succession of fleeting moments, any one of which might say something significant. Alfred Eisenstaedt

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital. Oscar Wilde

I just love pretty things, whether it is art, a song or a pair of shoes. Rita Ora

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing. Edmund Burke

What a beautiful art, but what a wretched profession. Georges Bizet

All art is autobiographical. The pearl is the oyster's autobiography. Federico Fellini

I love the art of acting, and I love film, because you always have another chance if you want it. You know, if we - if this isn't going well, you can't say - well, you could say - let's stop. Let's start over again, Gene, because you were too nervous. Gene Wilder

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. Salvador Dali

What is Art? It is the response of man's creative soul to the call of the Real. Rabindranath Tagore

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art. Aristotle

When artists make art, they shouldn't question whether it is permissible to do one thing or another. Sol LeWitt

All art is contemporary art because it had to be made when it was now. James Turrell

Certainly, I devote my energy to both telling my personal life story and seeking self- obliteration. However, I will not destroy myself through art. Yayoi Kusama

I think art is the only thing that's spiritual in the world. And I refuse to forced to believe in other people's interpretations of God. I don't think anybody should be. No one person can own the copyright to what God means. Marilyn Manson

Sculpture is the art of the intelligence. Pablo Picasso

When it came to my art, I went my own way and did not follow the trends. Frank Frazetta

In the 1960s when the recording studio suddenly really took off as a tool, it was the kids from art school who knew how to use it, not the kids from music school. Music students were all stuck in the notion of music as performance, ephemeral. Whereas for art students, music as painting? They knew how to do that. Brian Eno

The Bauhaus strives to bring together all creative effort into one whole, to reunify all the disciplines of practical art - sculpture, painting, handicrafts, and crafts - as inseparable components of a new architecture. Walter Gropius

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. Dwight D. Eisenhower

I've been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good. Barbra Streisand

The human soul is hungry for beauty; we seek it everywhere - in landscape, music, art, clothes, furniture, gardening, companionship, love, religion, and in ourselves. No one would desire not to be beautiful. When we experience the beautiful, there is a sense of homecoming. John O'Donohue

I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind. William Butler Yeats

The modern artist is working with space and time, and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating. Jackson Pollock

Listen to your inner-voice: Surround yourself with loving, nurturing people. Fall in love with your art and find yourself. Music is the great communicator. Glenn Hughes

The public needs art - and it is the responsibility of a 'self-proclaimed artist' to realize that the public needs art, and not to make bourgeois art for a few and ignore the masses. Keith Haring

Making art is not the matter of a moment, and nor is making an exhibition; curating follows art. Hans-Ulrich Obrist

The strangeness will wear off and I think we will discover the deeper meanings in modern art. Jackson Pollock

Everything great in science and art is simple. What can be less complicated than the greatest discoveries of humanity - gravitation, the compass, the printing press, the steam engine, the electric telegraph? Jules Verne

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

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun. Ludwig van Beethoven

Filmmaking, like any other art, is a very profound means of human communication; beyond the professional pleasure of succeeding or the pain of failing, you do want your film to be seen, to communicate itself to other people. Kenneth Lonergan

Music draws from almost the identical place as art does, which really is that intangible - it's like you're pulling from the ether. I don't know where it comes from. Brandon Boyd

The whole art of war consists of guessing at what is on the other side of the hill. Arthur Wellesley

For me, fragrances are very - one of these beautiful art forms that bring about a whole host of things. It's what you want to smell like, it's memories that make you smile or are resonant of times in your life, it can remind you of music. If you're a lover of scent, it's a very kind of particular and evocative thing. Chris Pine

My art originates from hallucinations only I can see. I translate the hallucinations and obsessional images that plague me into sculptures and paintings. Yayoi Kusama

There are no contests in the Art of Peace. A true warrior is invincible because he or she contests with nothing. Defeat means to defeat the mind of contention that we harbor within. Morihei Ueshiba


Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them. Paul Hawken

My motivation for being a good drummer was born out of fear, which, in a way, seems so antithetical to what art should be. Damien Chazelle

There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone. Duke Ellington

'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.' W. H. Auden

No great art has ever been made without the artist having known danger. Rainer Maria Rilke

There is so much art can do to enlighten people, no matter what their views might be. If art can't go there or doesn't elevate the social consciousness in some way, then we are in peril. Octavia Spencer

I always saw candy as art. Dylan Lauren

Of all lies, art is the least untrue. Gustave Flaubert

This world is but a canvas to our imagination. Henry David Thoreau

I believe the target of anything in life should be to do it so well that it becomes an art. Arsene Wenger

One's art goes as far and as deep as one's love goes. Andrew Wyeth

To curb the machine and limit art to handicraft is a denial of opportunity. Lewis Mumford

I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his 'divine service.' Friedrich Nietzsche

Painting is an infinitely minute part of my personality. Salvador Dali

To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy. Will Durant

I don't think there's any artist of any value who doesn't doubt what they're doing. Francis Ford Coppola

Part of what I do and what I want to do is I want to bring art into the everyday life. If you can take ordinary just walking in the street and you're confronted by something, that might change your day - it might inspire you. Kenny Scharf

'Untitled' is a time machine that can transport you to 1992, an edgy moment when the art world was crumbling, money was scarce, and artists like Tiravanija were in the nascent stages of combining Happenings, performance art, John Cage, Joseph Beuys, and the do-it-yourself ethos of punk. Meanwhile, a new art world was coming into being. Jerry Saltz

I had always planned to make a large painting of the early spring, when the first leaves are at the bottom of the trees, and they seem to float in space in a wonderful way. But the arrival of spring can't be done in one picture. David Hockney

Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art. Ambrose Bierce

We are so fortunate, as Australians, to have among us the oldest continuing cultures in human history. Cultures that link our nation with deepest antiquity. We have Aboriginal rock art in the Kimberley that is as ancient as the great Palaeolithic cave paintings at Altamira and Lascaux in Europe. Kevin Rudd

I like art. It's another way to rebel. John Waters

Politeness is the art of choosing among your thoughts. Madame de Stael

What art is, in reality, is this missing link, not the links which exist. It's not what you see that is art; art is the gap. Marcel Duchamp

I mean, making art is about objectifying your experience of the world, transforming the flow of moments into something visual, or textual, or musical, whatever. Art creates a kind of commentary. Barbara Kruger

Raising children is a creative endeavor, an art rather than a science. Bruno Bettelheim

What is the intersection between technology, art and science? Curiosity and wonder, because it drives us to explore, because we're surrounded by things we can't see. Louie Schwartzberg

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being. Thornton Wilder

Riding a race bike is an art - a thing that you do because you feel something inside. Valentino Rossi

When hospitality becomes an art it loses its very soul. Max Beerbohm

I think art teaches us how to feel, what our parameters can be, what sensations can be like; it makes you more engaged with life. Jeff Koons

Shadows sometimes people don't see shadows. The Chinese of course never paint them in pictures, oriental art never deals with shadow. But I noticed these shadows and I knew it meant it was sunny. David Hockney

When one lives in a society where people can no longer rely on the institutions to tell them the truth, the truth must come from culture and art. John Trudell

Society is like a large piece of frozen water; and skating well is the great art of social life. Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art. Leonardo da Vinci

I will never forget experiencing Venice for the first time. It feels like you are transported to another time - the art, music, food and pure romance in the air is like no other place. Elizabeth Berkley

Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy. Isaac Newton

With color one obtains an energy that seems to stem from witchcraft. Henri Matisse

It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it. Anais Nin

The fine art of preparing sushi is something that you watch and learn. Nobu Matsuhisa

Making art, good art, is always a struggle. It can make you happy when you pull it off. There's no better feeling. It's beauteous. But it's always about hard work and inspiration and sweat and good ideas. Damien Hirst

Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary. Boris Pasternak

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls. Pablo Picasso

If you cannot learn to love real art, at least learn to hate sham art and reject it. William Morris

The strong bond of sisterhood was a famous trait in classical art and literature about Amazons. But it was modern people who interpreted that as a sexual preference for women. That started in the 20th century. The Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva declared that Amazons were symbolic of lesbianism in antiquity. Adrienne Mayor

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. Aristotle

Modernity is the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, which make up one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immutable. This transitory fugitive element, which is constantly changing, must not be despised or neglected. Charles Baudelaire

The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection. Michelangelo

Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin - find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less. Maya Angelou

Music draws from almost the identical place as art does, which really is that intangible - it's like you're pulling from the ether. I don't know where it comes from. Brandon Boyd

The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be adequately represented in symbols of speech, nor by speech itself. The resources of the graphic art are taxed beyond their powers in attempting to portray its features. Language and illustration combined must fail. John Wesley Powell

For me, I see filmmaking as art. Emily Browning

My attitude towards drawing is not necessarily about drawing. It's about making the best kind of image I can make, it's about talking as clearly as I can. Jim Dine

There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about. Helen Frankenthaler

Gossip is the art of saying nothing in a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid. Walter Winchell

My painting does not come from the easel. Jackson Pollock

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality. Pablo Picasso

'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.' W. H. Auden

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist. Oscar Wilde


There will be very few occasions when you are absolutely certain about anything. You will consistently be called upon to make decisions with limited information. That being the case, your goal should not be to eliminate uncertainty. Instead, you must develop the art of being clear in the face of uncertainty. Andy Stanley

I am a poor man and of little worth, who is laboring in that art that God has given me in order to extend my life as long as possible. Michelangelo

Of what use were the arts if they were only the reproduction and the imitation of life? Alfred de Vigny

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well. Aristotle

I can't bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd. D. H. Lawrence

Only in art will the lion lie down with the lamb, and the rose grow without the thorn. Martin Amis

To injure an opponent is to injure yourself. To control aggression without inflicting injury is the Art of Peace. Morihei Ueshiba

I do not want art for a few any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few. William Morris

Painting is by nature a luminous language. Robert Delaunay

To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it. Leo Tolstoy

I don't understand it. Jack will spend any amount of money to buy votes but he balks at investing a thousand dollars in a beautiful painting. Jackie Kennedy

Patience is the art of concealing your impatience. Guy Kawasaki

Use the creative process - singing, writing, art, dance, whatever - to get to know yourself better. Catie Curtis

I have been using polka dots since I was a very young child. Only after that, it seems, have they been used throughout the rest of the art world. Yayoi Kusama

Photography is a major force in explaining man to man. Edward Steichen

We at BMW do not build cars as consumer objects, just to drive from A to B. We build mobile works of art. Chris Bangle

I like the fact that in ancient Chinese art the great painters always included a deliberate flaw in their work: human creation is never perfect. Madeleine L'Engle

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. Groucho Marx

What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit. John Updike

I mean, making art is about objectifying your experience of the world, transforming the flow of moments into something visual, or textual, or musical, whatever. Art creates a kind of commentary. Barbara Kruger

Rationalism is the enemy of art, though necessary as a basis for architecture. Arthur Erickson

What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time. John Berger

I represent a body image that wasn't accepted in high fashion before, and I'm very lucky to be supported by the designers, stylists, and editors that I am: ones that know this is fashion; this is art. It can never stay the same. It's 2015. Gigi Hadid

Romantic art deals with the exception and with the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to the normal, and so, commonplace type, are artistically uninteresting. Oscar Wilde

When I am finishing a picture, I hold some God-made object up to it - a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand - as a final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there's a clash between the two, it's bad art. Marc Chagall

I think everybody has different priorities in their life. People live their lives differently. People become famous through all sorts of different reasons... some of it through art and some of it through just wanting to be famous. And I think how that all starts tends to reflect how you live your life daily. Keith Urban

Simplicity and repose are the qualities that measure the true value of any work of art. Frank Lloyd Wright

When one paints an ideal, one does not need to limit one's imagination. Ellen Key

I think you get most of the most interesting work done in fields where people don't think they're doing art but are merely practicing a craft and working as good craftsmen. Being literate as a writer is good craft, is knowing your job, is knowing how to use your tools properly and not to damage the tools as you use them. Douglas Adams

Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun. Pablo Picasso

Where there is no human connection, there is no compassion. Without compassion, then community, commitment, loving-kindness, human understanding, and peace all shrivel. Individuals become isolated, the isolated turn cruel, and the tragic hovers in the forms of domestic and civil violence. Art and literature are antidotes to that. Susan Vreeland

I will preach with my brush. Henry Ossawa Tanner

Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on. Robert Frost

With just one polka dot, nothing can be achieved. In the universe, there is the sun, the moon, the earth, and hundreds of millions of stars. All of us live in the unfathomable mystery and infinitude of the universe. Pursuing 'philosophy of the universe' through art under such circumstances has led me to what I call 'stereotypical repetition.' Yayoi Kusama

The art of a people is a true mirror to their minds. Jawaharlal Nehru

You begin with the possibilities of the material. Robert Rauschenberg

I'm inspired by artists and musicians. There are so many wonderful and talented people in the world. I love discovering new music, new writers, or new art. Alicia Keys

The art of healing comes from nature, not from the physician. Therefore the physician must start from nature, with an open mind. Paracelsus

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul. George Bernard Shaw

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal. Igor Stravinsky

The modern tradition is the tradition of revolt. The French Revolution is still our model today: history is violent change, and this change goes by the name of progress. I do not know whether these notions really apply to art. Octavio Paz

All art is political in the sense that it serves someone's politics. August Wilson

All art is exorcism. I paint dreams and visions too; the dreams and visions of my time. Painting is the effort to produce order; order in yourself. There is much chaos in me, much chaos in our time. Otto Dix

An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world. George Santayana

Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs. Thomas Wolfe

All art is propaganda, and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy. I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda. W. E. B. Du Bois

All good art is an indiscretion. Tennessee Williams

All great art is born of the metropolis. Ezra Pound

All married couples should learn the art of battle as they should learn the art of making love. Good battle is objective and honest - never vicious or cruel. Good battle is healthy and constructive, and brings to a marriage the principles of equal partnership. Ann Landers

All nature is but art unknown to thee. Alexander Pope

All nature is but art unknown to thee. Alexander Pope

All of Koons's best art - the encased vacuum cleaners, the stainless-steel Rabbit (the late-twentieth century's signature work of Simulationist sculpture), the amazing gleaming Balloon Dog, and the cast-iron re-creation of a Civil War mortar exhibited last month at the Armory - has simultaneously flaunted extreme realism, idealism, and fantasy. Jerry Saltz

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on. Havelock Ellis

All the best parts of art come from pain turned to celebration. Natalia Kills


All the great works of art, the cathedrals - the Gothic cathedrals and the splendid Baroque churches - are a luminous sign of God, and thus are truly a manifestation, an epiphany of God. Pope Benedict XVI

An album is a whole universe, and the recording studio is a three-dimensional kind of art space that I can fill with sound. Just as the album art and videos are ways of adding more dimensions to the words and music. I like to be involved in all of it because it's all of a piece. Bat for Lashes

An architect is given a program, budget, place, and schedule. Sometimes the end product rises to art - or at least people call it that. Frank Gehry

An art which isn't based on feeling isn't an art at all. Paul Cezanne

An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one. Charles Horton Cooley

An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture. Jean Cocteau

Because art as a pursuit, as a concept, as an ideal, constantly elevates one above the pragmatic, one is inclined to discuss art in heightened terminologies. For me, it is just what I do all day long. Ralph Gibson

An artist carries on throughout his life a mysterious, uninterrupted conversation with his public. Maurice Chevalier

Cleanliness is the scourge of art. Craig Brown

An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision. James Whistler

Diversity: the art of thinking independently together. Malcolm Forbes

All art is dependent on technology because it's a human endeavour, so even when you're using charcoal on a wall or designed the proscenium arch, that's technology. George Lucas

An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it. Paul Valery

An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose. Langston Hughes

Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self. Alfred North Whitehead

During the Middle Ages they understood that words accompanied by imagery are much more memorable. By making the margins of a book colorful and beautiful, illuminations help make the text unforgettable. It's unfortunate that we've lost the art of illumination. Joshua Foer

An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's. J. D. Salinger

An empty canvas is a living wonder... far lovelier than certain pictures. Wassily Kandinsky

An empty canvas is full. Robert Rauschenberg

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way. Charles Bukowski

An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original. Jean Cocteau

And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart, till the Devil whispered behind the leaves 'It's pretty, but is it Art?' Rudyard Kipling

Animation is not the art of drawings that move but the art of movements that are drawn. Norman McLaren

Any form of art is a form of power; it has impact, it can affect change - it can not only move us, it makes us move. Ossie Davis

Any great art is meant to illuminate the human condition. Sterling K. Brown

Any work of art that can be understood is the product of journalism. Tristan Tzara

Anyone who works on a quilt, who devotes her time, energy, creativity, and passion to that art, learns to value the work of her hands. And as any quilter will tell you, a quilter's quilting friends are some of the dearest, most generous, and most supportive people she knows. Jennifer Chiaverini

Architects, sculptors painters, we all must return to the crafts! For art is not a 'profession.' There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman. Walter Gropius

Architecture is a art when one consciously or unconsciously creates aesthetic emotion in the atmosphere and when this environment produces well being. Luis Barragan

Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art. Andy Warhol

Architecture is basically the design of interiors, the art of organizing interior space. Philip Johnson

Colloquial poetry is to the real art as the barber's wax dummy is to sculpture. Ezra Pound

Are you really sure that a floor can't also be a ceiling? M. C. Escher

Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses. William Hazlitt

Art and nature shall always be wrestling until they eventually conquer one another so that the victory is the same stroke and line: that which is conquered, conquers at the same time. Maria Sibylla Merian

Do activities you're passionate about - which make your heart and soul feel perky - including things like working out, cooking, painting, writing, yoga, hiking, walking, swimming, being in nature, being around art, or reading inspiring books. Karen Salmansohn

Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation. Mason Cooley

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim. Aristotle

An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have. Andy Warhol

Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed. William Blake

Art cannot be modern. Art is primordially eternal. Egon Schiele

Art can't be taught; passion can't be taught; discipline can't be taught; but craft can be taught. And writing is both an art and a craft. Elizabeth George

Art challenges technology, but technology inspires the art. John Lasseter

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame. Gilbert K. Chesterton

Art depends on luck and talent. Francis Ford Coppola

Art distills sensations and embodies it with enhanced meaning. Miguel de Unamuno

Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see. Paul Klee

Art doesn't transform. It just plain forms. Roy Lichtenstein

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. Thomas Merton

Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist. Rene Magritte

Art for art's sake is a philosophy of the well-fed. Frank Lloyd Wright

Art gives people a reason to be alive. Marilyn Manson

Besides black art, there is only automation and mechanization. Federico Garcia Lorca


Art has the power to transform, to illuminate, to educate, inspire and motivate. Harvey Fierstein

Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment. Claude Monet

Art has to move you and design does not, unless it's a good design for a bus. David Hockney

Cyberbullying isn't real. But bullying and harassment certainly are real. Trust me, friends, I went to school in England. They've got bullying down to a fine art. I know, because I was one of its chief architects. I was awful to my fellow schoolboys. Milo Yiannopoulos

Art history is less explosive than the rest of history, so it sinks faster into the pulverized regions of time. Robert Smithson

Does art have a future? Performance genres like opera, theater, music and dance are thriving all over the world, but the visual arts have been in slow decline for nearly 40 years. No major figure of profound influence has emerged in painting or sculpture since the waning of Pop Art and the birth of Minimalism in the early 1970s. Camille Paglia

Art hurts. Art urges voyages - and it is easier to stay at home. Gwendolyn Brooks

Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call. Sylvia Plath

Art in Nature is rhythmic and has a horror of constraint. Robert Delaunay

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

Art in the classroom not only spurs creativity, it also inspires learning. Mickey Hart

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better. Andre Gide

Art begins with resistance - at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor. Andre Gide

Art is a harmony parallel with nature. Paul Cezanne

Art is a lie that makes us realize truth. Pablo Picasso

Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious. Jean Cocteau

Art is a revolt against fate. All art is a revolt against man's fate. Andre Malraux

Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed. Khalil Gibran

Art is a way to express yourself and through that you can escape a bad situation. Russell Simmons

Art is about building a new foundation, not just laying something on top of what's already there. Prince

Art is about profundity. It's about connecting to everything that it means to be alive, but you have to act. Jeff Koons

Art is all a matter of personality. Marcel Duchamp

Art is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time. Karl Marx

Art is an expression of who we are, what we believe, and what we dream about. Julianne Moore

Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form. Toni Morrison

Art is an invention of aesthetics, which in turn is an invention of philosophers... What we call art is a game. Octavio Paz

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

Art is anything people do with distinction. Louis Dudek

Dance music is my love, is my passion, is my life. I live for my fans and take my art very seriously. Steve Aoki

Art is Art. Everything else is everything else. Ad Reinhardt

Dolls fire our collective imagination, for better and - too often - for worse. From life-size dolls the same height as the little girls who carry them, to dolls whose long hair can 'grow' longer, to Barbie and her fashionable sisters, dolls do double duty as child's play and the focus of adult art and adult fear. Ellen Datlow

Art is beauty, the perpetual invention of detail, the choice of words, the exquisite care of execution. Theophile Gautier

Economics is not an exact science. It's a combination of an art and elements of science. And that's almost the first and last lesson to be learned about economics: that in my judgment, we are not converging toward exactitude, but we're improving our data bases and our ways of reasoning about them. Paul Samuelson

Art is built on the deepest themes of human meaning: good and evil, beauty and ugliness, life and death, love and hate. No other story has incarnated those themes more than the story of Jesus. John Ortberg

Every artist was first an amateur. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which nature herself is animated. Auguste Rodin

Art is either plagiarism or revolution. Paul Gauguin

Art is like a border of flowers along the course of civilization. Lincoln Steffens

Art is longing. You never arrive, but you keep going in the hope that you will. Anselm Kiefer

Art is a critical component in a well-rounded education. Art is the level playing field - no matter how rich or poor, tall or short, pretty or ugly to the bone, if you can draw, you can find personal fulfillment and build self-confidence. Art is the highest achievement of mankind. Lynda Resnick

Art is nature speeded up and God slowed down. Malcolm de Chazal

Art is not meant to change the world, but when you see people interacting, when you see an impact on their lives, then I guess in a smaller way, this is changing the world. So, that's what I believe in. That's why I'm into creating more and more interactions. JR

Education is the art of making man ethical. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest. Friedrich Nietzsche

Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth. Theodor Adorno

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it. Frank Zappa

Art is man's constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him. Chinua Achebe

Art is man's expression of his joy in labor. Henry Kissinger

Art is messy, art is chaos - so you need a system. Andrew Stanton

Art is never finished, only abandoned. Leonardo da Vinci

Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced. Leo Tolstoy

Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth. John Ruskin

Blue thou art, intensely blue; Flower, whence came thy dazzling hue? James Montgomery

Art is not a thing; it is a way. Elbert Hubbard

Controversy is part of the nature of art and creativity. Yoko Ono

Art is not for the cultivated taste. It is to cultivate taste. Nikki Giovanni


Dancers are a work of art - they are the canvas on which their work is painted. Patrick Duffy

Art is not living. It is the use of living. Audre Lorde

Don't avoid extremes, and don't choose any one extreme. Remain available to both the polarities - that is the art, the secret of balancing. Rajneesh

Every artist writes his own autobiography. Havelock Ellis

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs. Pablo Picasso

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see. Edgar Degas

Art is nothing if you don't reach every segment of the people. Keith Haring

Art is one thing that can go on mattering once it has stopped hurting. Elizabeth Bowen

Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art. Harry S Truman

Art is pattern informed by sensibility. Herbert Read

Art is made to disturb, science reassures. Georges Braque

Art is the child of Nature; yes, her darling child, in whom we trace the features of the mother's face, her aspect and her attitude. Beck

Art is the daughter of freedom. Friedrich Schiller

Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in. Amy Lowell

Art is the elimination of the unnecessary. Pablo Picasso

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

By the will art thou lost, by the will art thou found, by the will art thou free, captive, and bound. Angelus Silesius

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern. Alfred North Whitehead

Copy, art, and typography should be seen as a living entity; each element integrally related, in harmony with the whole, and essential to the execution of an idea. Paul Rand

Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth. Pablo Picasso

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage. H. L. Mencken

Art is the most beautiful of all lies. Claude Debussy

Enjoying art is a personal matter. It's made up by contemplation, silence, abstraction. Renzo Piano

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known. Oscar Wilde

Art is the only way to run away without leaving home. Twyla Tharp

Art is the path to being spiritual. Piet Mondrian

Art is the proper task of life. Friedrich Nietzsche

Art is the provocation for talking about enigma and the search for sense in human life. One can do that by telling a story or writing about a fresco by Giotto or studying how a snail climbs up a wall. John Berger

Art is the right hand of Nature. The latter has only given us being, the former has made us men. Friedrich Schiller

Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail. Theodore Dreiser

Art is the triumph over chaos. John Cheever

Art is science made clear. Wilson Mizner

Art is subject to arbitrary fashion. Kary Mullis

Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings. Agnes Martin

Art is the most beautiful deception of all. And although people try to incorporate the everyday events of life in it, we must hope that it will remain a deception lest it become a utilitarian thing, sad as a factory. Claude Debussy

Don't be an art critic. Paint. There lies salvation. Paul Cezanne

Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. Isaac Bashevis Singer

Art is the tree of life. Science is the tree of death. William Blake

Art is too serious to be taken seriously. Ad Reinhardt

Art is what you can get away with. Andy Warhol

Art is, for me, the process of trying to wake up the soul. Because we live in an industrialized, fast-paced world that prefers that the soul remain asleep. Bill Viola

Art must take reality by surprise. Francoise Sagan

'Art or anti-art?' was the question I asked when I returned from Munich in 1912 and decided to abandon pure painting or painting for its own sake. I thought of introducing elements alien to painting as the only way out of a pictorial and chromatic dead end. Marcel Duchamp

Cats are anthropomorphised in art because they are so laid back that you automatically attribute human thoughts and feelings to them. Jim Davis

Art ought never to be considered except in its relations with its ideal beauty. Alfred de Vigny

'Crazy' is a term of art; 'Insane' is a term of law. Remember that, and you will save yourself a lot of trouble. Hunter S. Thompson

Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time. Jean Cocteau

Design is the method of putting form and content together. Design, just as art, has multiple definitions; there is no single definition. Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated. Paul Rand

Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise, what would become of beauty? Paul Gauguin

Don't only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; art deserves that, for it and knowledge can raise man to the Divine. Ludwig van Beethoven

Art resides in the quality of doing, process is not magic. Charles Eames

Envy is the art of counting the other fellow's blessings instead of your own. Harold Coffin

Art should be an oasis: a place or refuge from the hardness of life. Fernando Botero

Every good painter paints what he is. Jackson Pollock

Art should never be limited - the beauty of art is that it gives us the freedom to go places where we wouldn't go to in our normal lives. Inside, I'm just so many different people. I go from the pretty girl on the red carpet to the singer at Ozzfest, spitting in the crowd. That's Jada. Jada Pinkett Smith

Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic. Oscar Wilde

Art to me is a humanitarian act and I believe that there is a responsibility that art should somehow be able to effect mankind, to make the word a better place. Jeff Koons

Art used to be made in the name of faith. We made cathedrals, we made stained-glass windows, we made murals. Julia Cameron

Art was, seriously, the only thing I'd ever wanted to own. It has always been for me a stable nourishment. I use it. It can change the way that I feel in the mornings. David Bowie

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. Pablo Picasso

Art will never be able to exist without nature. Pierre Bonnard

Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess? Ludwig van Beethoven

Art, as far as it is able, follows nature, as a pupil imitates his master; thus your art must be, as it were, God's grandchild. Dante Alighieri

Art, freedom and creativity will change society faster than politics. Victor Pinchuk


Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers - and never succeeding. Gian Carlo Menotti

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere. Gilbert K. Chesterton

Art, to me, is the interpretation of the impression which nature makes upon the eye and brain. Childe Hassam

Art, whatever form it takes, requires hard work, craftsmanship and creativity. As a writer, I know my grammar, cadence, the music of prose, and the art of the narrative. F. Sionil Jose

Certainly there is, for the American Negro artist who can escape the restrictions the more advanced among his own group would put upon him, a great field of unused material ready for his art. Langston Hughes

Artists don't make objects. Artists make mythologies. Anish Kapoor

Creative output, you know, is just pain. I'm going to be cliche for a minute and say that great art comes from pain. Kanye West

Artists live in unknown spaces and give themselves over to following something unknown. Kiki Smith

Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock. Will Rogers

Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is. Robert Smithson

Don't you know that every perfect life would mean the end of art? Robert Musil

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

Errors are not in the art but in the artificers. Isaac Newton

Art's a very metaphysical activity. It's something that enriches the parameters of your life, the possibilities of being, and you touch transcendence and you change your life. And you want to change the life of others, too. That's why people are involved with art. Jeff Koons

Every human is an artist. And this is the main art that we have: the creation of our story. Don Miguel Ruiz

Art's everything we hope life would be, a lot of times. Frank Ocean

As a person, I was born to give out my opinions. By giving out my opinions, I realize who I am. As long as I can communicate, I'm not so lonely. If I cannot travel, or do art, or have company, if they take away all my belongings, it doesn't matter at all. Ai Weiwei

As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction. Stan Getz

As in nature, as in art, so in grace; it is rough treatment that gives souls, as well as stones, their luster. Thomas Guthrie

At no point do I wish to be in conflict with any man or masculine thought. It doesn't enter my consciousness. Art is anonymous. It's not competitive with men. It's a complementary contribution. Barbara Hepworth

Baking is both an art and a science. Sherry Yard

Balancing hopes, desires and an appreciating of the possibilities with a clear-eyed assessment of the limitations: that is the art of choosing. Sheena Iyengar

Ballet is an incredibly difficult, beautiful art form that takes a lot of training, a lot of time, and a lot of hard work. Sutton Foster

Be careful that you do not write or paint anything that is not your own, that you don't know in your own soul. Emily Carr

Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant. Socrates

Be true to yourself, help others, make each day your masterpiece, make friendship a fine art, drink deeply from good books - especially the Bible, build a shelter against a rainy day, give thanks for your blessings and pray for guidance every day. John Wooden

Be true to yourself. Make each day a masterpiece. Help others. Drink deeply from good books. Make friendship a fine art. Build a shelter against a rainy day. John Wooden

Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos. Stephen Sondheim

A strong work of art really leaves people speechless. They feel a little angry because they don't understand it. Michael Heizer

Creative without strategy is called 'art.' Creative with strategy is called 'advertising.' Jef I. Richards

A sculptor is a person who is interested in the shape of things, a poet in words, a musician by sounds. Henry Moore

Certainly, I devote my energy to both telling my personal life story and seeking self- obliteration. However, I will not destroy myself through art. Yayoi Kusama

A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual. Vladimir Nabokov

Diplomacy: the art of restraining power. Henry Kissinger

A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind. Eugene Ionesco

Draw your pleasure, paint your pleasure, and express your pleasure strongly. Pierre Bonnard

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Oscar Wilde

Even a true artist does not always produce art. Carroll O'Connor

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

Every human is an artist. The dream of your life is to make beautiful art. Don Miguel Ruiz

A room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts. Joshua Reynolds

Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued. Jean Rostand

Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence. Henri Matisse

Discipline in art is a fundamental struggle to understand oneself, as much as to understand what one is drawing. Henry Moore

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. C. S. Lewis

Every man lives in two realms: the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. Scott Adams

Every model is a living sculpture - art in-vivo. Stephane Rolland

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim. Aristotle

Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad. Salvador Dali

Fine art is knowledge made visible. Gustave Courbet

Music embodies feeling without forcing it to contend and combine with thought, as it is forced in most arts and especially in the art of words. Franz Liszt

Exposing yourself to many kinds of art can only lead to amazing things. It helps you learn about your own art, your own taste, what kind of art you want to create for yourself. Phillipa Soo

Modesty: the gentle art of enhancing your charm by pretending not to be aware of it. Oliver Herford

The truth is, what Americans enjoy about football is much of what makes the sport dangerous. However, I believe there must be a way to find the art of success and vitality in football, without the driving the level of impact that causes serious risk of head trauma, paralysis and other life-changing injuries. Naveen Jain

In a way I spend my entire life stealing from everything - from the past, from cities I love, from where I grew up - grabbing things, taking not only from architecture but from Italy, art, writing, poetry, music. Renzo Piano

The word 'art' interests me very much. If it comes from Sanskrit, as I've heard, it signifies 'making.' Now everyone makes something, and those who make things on a canvas with a frame, they're called artists. Formerly, they were called craftsmen, a term I prefer. We're all craftsmen, in civilian or military or artistic life. Marcel Duchamp

For me, the gallery legitimates the art production and helps build collections. I don't think an artist should do everything by himself forever. I did it for years and then slowly built my circle of trust. JR

My eyes were made to erase all that is ugly. Raoul Dufy

There are periods in history when change is necessary, and other periods when it is better to keep everything for the time as it is. The art of life is to be in the rhythm of your age. Oswald Mosley

A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes he has the biggest piece. Ludwig Erhard

Graffiti's always been a temporary art form. You make your mark and then they scrub it off. Banksy

My paintings are not about what is seen. They are about what is known forever in the mind. Agnes Martin

There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence. Rebecca West

Herman Melville was supposed to be an accountant. Van Gogh was meant to be an art dealer. I was meant to take the train into New York and work for a bank. To be an artist, you have to say goodbye to your family. Don McLean


No heirloom of humankind captures the past as do art and language. Theodore Bikel

There's an art to making something look good when, on a hanger, it's just a black coat. Daria Werbowy

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Albert Einstein

Oh, if it be to choose and call thee mine, love, thou art every day my Valentine! Thomas Hood

Through a painting we can see the whole world. Hans Hofmann

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need. Auguste Rodin

Only in art will the lion lie down with the lamb, and the rose grow without thorn. Martin Amis

To make pictures big is to make them more powerful. Robert Mapplethorpe

I don't believe in art. I believe in artists. Marcel Duchamp

Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do. Edgar Degas

To say the word Romanticism is to say modern art - that is, intimacy, spirituality, color, aspiration towards the infinite, expressed by every means available to the arts. Charles Baudelaire

I don't want life to imitate art. I want life to be art. Ernst Fischer

People criticized me for my photography. They said it's not art. David Hockney

Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass. Fran Lebowitz

I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I tell them the truth and they never believe me. Camillo di Cavour

Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art. Ansel Adams

We can learn the art of fierce compassion - redefining strength, deconstructing isolation and renewing a sense of community, practicing letting go of rigid us-vs.-them thinking - while cultivating power and clarity in response to difficult situations. Sharon Salzberg

I like to change. A new lamp, a piece of art, can transform a room. Madonna Ciccone

Politics is the art of the possible. Otto von Bismarck

What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism. Octavio Paz

I never called my work an 'art'. It's part of show business, the business of building entertainment. Walt Disney

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

What marks the artist is his power to shape the material of pain we all have. Lionel Trilling

I see myself and many artists like me as the torchbearers through these dark ages. John Zorn

Rules and models destroy genius and art. William Hazlitt

When I go to an art gallery and stand in front of a painting, I don't want someone telling me what I should be seeing or thinking; I want to feel whatever I feel, see whatever I see, and figure out what I figure out. James Frey

I think it is in collaboration that the nature of art is revealed. Steve Lacy

Simplicity is natures first step, and the last of art. Philip James Bailey

When science, art, literature, and philosophy are simply the manifestation of personality they are on a level where glorious and dazzling achievements are possible, which can make a man's name live for thousands of years. Denis Diderot

I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me. Maya Lin

Some people have been kind enough to call me a fine artist. I've always called myself an illustrator. I'm not sure what the difference is. All I know is that whatever type of work I do, I try to give it my very best. Art has been my life. Norman Rockwell

Where thou art, that is home. Emily Dickinson

If a building becomes architecture, then it is art. Arne Jacobsen

Technology, like art, is a soaring exercise of the human imagination. Daniel Bell

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable. George Bernard Shaw

A picture book is a small door to the enormous world of the visual arts, and they're often the first art a young person sees. Tomie dePaola

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it. Anais Nin

The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one. Martin Luther King, Jr.

You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself. Milan Kundera

I'm interested in what would normally be considered the worst aspects of commercial art. I think it's the tension between what seems to be so rigid and cliched and the fact that art really can't be this way. Roy Lichtenstein

The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes. Tony Blair

You wouldn't have the same art on the walls at every restaurant or the same waiter uniforms. Neither should you have the same service style at every restaurant. Danny Meyer

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery. Mark Van Doren

In art, there is no need for color; I see only light and shade. Give me a crayon, and I will paint your portrait. Francisco Goya

The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation. Auguste Rodin

A blind man can make art if what is in his mind can be passed to another mind in some tangible form. Sol LeWitt

A good painting to me has always been like a friend. It keeps me company, comforts and inspires. Hedy Lamarr

A great artist can paint a great picture on a small canvas. Charles Dudley Warner

A great artist is always before his time or behind it. George Edward Moore

A great city, whose image dwells in the memory of man, is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; Faith hovers over the towers of Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world, Art. Benjamin Disraeli

A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession. Albert Camus

A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not. Leonardo da Vinci

A line is a dot that went for a walk. Paul Klee

A lot of my work is about sales. And it was about being independent from the art market. Jeff Koons

A man paints with his brains and not with his hands. Michelangelo


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

A museum is a spiritual place. People lower their voices when they get close to art. Mario Botta

A nice blend of prediction and surprise seem to be at the heart of the best art. Wendy Carlos

A painting that is well composed is half finished. Pierre Bonnard

A picture is a poem without words. Horace

A picture is worth a thousand words. Unknown

A beautiful lady is an accident of nature. A beautiful old lady is a work of art. Louis Nizer

A restaurant is a compendium of choices that the owner has made. If you look around a restaurant, everything represents a choice: the kind of salt shaker that's on the table, the art on the walls, the uniforms on the waiters. Danny Meyer

Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper the photographer begins with the finished product. Edward Steichen

Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art. Andy Warhol

The study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself. Working on a motorcycle, working well, caring, is to become part of a process, to achieve an inner peace of mind. The motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon. Robert M. Pirsig