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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"As humanity perfects itself, man becomes degraded. When everything is reduced to the mere counter-balancing of economic interests, what room will there be for virtue? When Nature has been so subjugated that she has lost all her original forms, where will that leave the plastic arts? And so on. In the mean time, things are going to get very murky."
"Be orderly and disciplined in daily life, like a good bourgeois, so that I might be wild and violent in my art."
"The morality of art is in its very beauty."
"My art school rejection letter arrived as a cold manila fist that closed around my fragile hopes ... The fear was practically edible. Nothing would happen unless I get out and make it happen. Then, as if handling me the keys to the jet pack, my dad bought me a typewriter and a taped message to the inside of its case: "Son - the world is waiting to hear from you"."
"I love the art form of songwriting. I get to carry a lot of vibes to a lot of people. My songs are all about the human condition, and people will be able to find themselves in my songs."
"It's amazing how everyone has their different ways of working. I like hearing about that process, reading about it. I have so much appreciation for movies because I understand how hard it is to make one. There is always something I gain from watching a movie, whether it's a silly romantic comedy or an art film."
"Art is a wicked thing. It is what we are."
"Bement was a very good teacher but he was a very poor painter. I guess he wasn't a painter at all. He had no courage and I believe that to create one's own world in any of the arts takes courage."
"Plainly, such an approach does not exclude other ways of trying to comprehend the world. Someone committed to it (as I am) can consistently believe (as I do) that we learn much more of human interest about how people think and feel and act by reading novels or studying history than from all of naturalistic psychology, and perhaps always will; similarly, the arts may offer appreciation of the heavens to which astrophysics cannot aspire."
"I think what we like about music - and what we like about art in general....is that enterprise that stops our minds from spinning. Because we're always all over the place. A good song, a good lyric is a movie: it will just focus and calm and confer significance on this completely bewildering reality that all of us live in."
"Shouldering your loneliness like a gun that you will not learn to aim, you stumble into this movie house then you climb, you climb into the frame."
"I've really only had one (dream) since I got into this business at 13 years old, which was to be in this business forever. Once I did my first television commercial, I caught that itch and that bug. I want to be a part of pieces of art - as far as cinema is concerned - that people will want to see for generations to come. That's my dream."
"O painter, take care lest the greed for gain prove a stronger incentive than renown in art, for to gain this renown is a far greater thing than is the renown of riches."
"O neglectful Nature, wherefore art thou thus partial, becoming to some of thy children a tender and benignant mother, to others a most cruel and ruthless stepmother? I see thy children given into slavery to others without ever receiving any benefit, and in lieu of any reward for the services they have done for them they are repaid by the severest punishments."
"How painting surpasses all human works by reason of the subtle possibilities which it contains."
"One painter ought never to imitate the manner of any other; because in that case he cannot be called the child of nature, but the grandchild. It is always best to have recourse to nature, which is replete with such abundance of objects, than to the productions of other masters, who learnt everything from her."
"I love this site. It was lovingly hand-shaped it. Your soul transformed this into this art. It was perfect. I have tried to create another equal to it... but to no avail, so I will just have to paint the Sistine Chapel."
"Those who become enamoured of the art, without having previously applied to the diligent study of the scientific part of it, may be compared to mariners who put to the sea in a ship without rudder or compass and therefore cannot be certain of arriving at the wished for port."
"I am damnably sick of Italy, Italian and Italians, outrageously, illogically sick.... I hate to think that Italians ever did anything in the way of art.... What did they do but illustrate a page or so of the New Testament! They themselves think they have a monopoly in the line. I am dead tired of their bello and bellezza."
"It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked looking-glass of a servant."
