Art quotes
22.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside art — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Some of my colleagues who are criticized today for lack of forthright principles-or who are looked upon with scorn as compromising "politicians"-are simply engaged in the fine art of conciliating, balancing and interpreting the forces and factions of public opinion, an art essential to keeping our nation united and enabling our Government to function."
"The art of drawing which is of more real importance to the human race than that of writing...should be taught to every child just as writing is."
"Never has interest in art been so high, and never has quality been so low."
"No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art."
"Robert Creely's poems have two main characteristics. 1) They are short; 2) they are not short enough."
"Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man."
"There is one plain rule of life. Try thyself unweariedly till thou findest the highest thing thou art capable of doing, faculties and outward circumstances being both duly considered, and then do it."
"hoever wishes to win in this game must have patience and money, since the values are so little constant and the rumors so little founded on truth Vision is the art of seeing things invisible."
"A writer, or any man, must believe that whatever happens to him is an instrument; everything has been given for an end. This is even stronger in the case of the artist. Everything that happens, including humiliations, embarrassments, misfortunes, all has been given like clay, like material for one's art. One must accept it."
"Chang Tzu tells us of a persevering man who after three laborious years mastered the art of dragon-slaying. For the rest of his days, he had not a single opportunity to test his skills."
"An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation."
"The ordinary true, or purely real, cannot be the object of the arts. Illusion on a ground of truth,--that is the secret of the fine arts."
"Gardening as far as Gardening is Art, or entitled to that appellation, is a deviation from nature; for if the true taste consists, as many hold, in banishing every appearance of Art, or any traces of the footsteps of man, it would then be no longer a Garden."
"The art of seeing nature, or, in other words, the art of using models, is in reality the great object, the point to which all our studies are directed."
"What has pleased and continues to please, is likely to please again; hence are derived the rules of art, and on this immovable foundation they must ever stand."
"Art is about freedom of expression, and should not be molded to fit any propaganda or lofty ideal."
"In morals, always do as others do; in art, never."
"There are only four great arts: music, painting, sculpture, and ornamental pastry- architecture being perhaps the least banal derivative of the latter."
"Myths are so intimately bound to culture, time, and place that unless the symbols, the metaphors, are kept alive by constant recreation through the arts, the life just slips away from them."
"All that is good in art is the expression of one soul talking to another, and is precious according to the greatness of the soul that utters it."
