Art quotes

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

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

Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.
Andy Warhol

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

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

I am not strong on perfection.
– Jasper Johns

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
– Scott Adams

Art is too serious to be taken seriously.
– Ad Reinhardt

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

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

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

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

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

Paint the essential character of things.
– Camille Pissarro

Art is what you can get away with.
Andy Warhol

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

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

A picture is a poem without words.
– Horace

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

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

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

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

Diversity: the art of thinking independently together.
– Malcolm Forbes

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

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

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.
– Michael Korda

I don’t see any boundaries between any of the art forms. I think they all inter-relate completely.
– David Bowie

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

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

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

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

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
George Bernard Shaw

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

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

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

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

Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.
Salvador Dali

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

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

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

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

The most seductive thing about art is the personality of the artist himself.
– Paul Cezanne

One eye sees, the other feels.
– Paul Klee

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A good painting to me has always been like a friend. It keeps me company, comforts and inspires.
– Hedy Lamarr

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

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

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

Washington, D.C., has everything that Rome, Paris and London have in the way of great architecture – great power bases. Washington has obelisks and pyramids and underground tunnels and great art and a whole shadow world that we really don’t see.
– Dan Brown

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

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