Great Art Quotes

• Great art stretches the taste, it doesn't follow tastes.

  Steve Jobs

  Art, Taste

  "Portrait of the Artist Behind Apple" by Manohla Dargis, www.nytimes.com. August 15, 2013.

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• It is frequently the tragedy of the great artist, as it is of the great scientist, that he frightens the ordinary man.

  Loren Eiseley

  Art, Men, Tragedy

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

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Business, Acting

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.755, GENERAL PRESS

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• A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.

  Paul Cezanne

  Art, Creativity, Emotion

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• Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness.

  George Jean Nathan

  Music, Art, Mad

  George Jean Nathan, Arnold Leslie Lazarus (1990). “A George Jean Nathan Reader”, p.79, Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press

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• For great things do not done just happen by impulse but are a succession of small things linked together.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Inspirational, Motivational, Perseverance

  Letter to Theo van Gogh from The Hague, www.webexhibits.org. October 22, 1882.

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• The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Inspirational, Leadership, Beautiful

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• Great art picks up where nature ends.

  Marc Chagall

  Art, Ends, Artist

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• There are worlds of experience beyond the world of the aggressive man, beyond history, and beyond science. The moods and qualities of nature and the revelations of great art are equally difficult to define; we can grasp them only in the depths of our perceptive spirit.

  Ansel Adams

  Art, Men, Quality

  Ansel Adams (1995). “Ansel Adams: photographs”

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• Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

  Scott Adams

  Love, Inspirational, Life

  Scott Adams (2007). “Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!: Cartoonist Explains Cloning, Blouse Monsters, Voting Machines, Romance, Monkey G ods, How to Avoid Being Mistaken for a Rodent, and More”, p.438, Penguin

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• Every artist was first an amateur.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Motivational, Inspiring

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VIII: Letters and Social Aims”, p.119, Harvard University Press

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• It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.

  Henri Matisse

  Cute, Art, Paint

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• The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion.

  T. S. Eliot

  Unique, Feelings, Immature

  "Essays on Elizabethan Drama".

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• Hatred, rancor, and the spirit of vengeance are useless baggage to the artist. His road is difficult enough for him to cleanse his soul of everything which could make it more so.

  Henri Matisse

  Artist, Hatred, Soul

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• I have always sought to be understood and, while I was taken to task by critics or colleagues, I thought they were right, assuming I had not been clear enough to be understood. This assumption allowed me to work my whole life without hatred and even without bitterness toward criticism, regardless of its source. I counted solely on the clarity of expression of my work to gain my ends. Hatred, rancor, and the spirit of vengeance are useless baggage to the artist. His road is difficult enough for him to cleanse his soul of everything which could make it more so.

  Henri Matisse

  Art, Taken, Expression

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• One of the surest tests of the superiority or inferiority of a poet is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.

  T. S. Eliot

  Art, Unique, Stealing Things

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• Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

  Pablo Picasso

  Life, Motivational, Music

  "LIFE", Vol. 57, nr. 11, (p. 9), September 11, 1964.

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• Great art is the expression of a solution of the conflict between the demands of the world without and that within.

  Edith Hamilton

  Art, Expression, World

  Edith Hamilton (1987). “The Greek way ; The Roman way”, Random House Value Pub

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• Any great art work … revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world - the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Motivational, Success, Time

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

  Twyla Tharp

  Music, Dance, Running

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

  Aristotle

  Art, Philosophy, Philosophical

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• I counted solely on the clarity of expression of my work to gain my ends.

  Henri Matisse

  Expression, Gains, Clarity

  Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1973). “Matisse on art”

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• The greater the artist, the greater the doubt.

  Robert Hughes

  Artist, Doubt, Inspirational Art

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

  George Bernard Shaw

  Art, Effort, Sake

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

  Ansel Adams

  Inspirational, Photography, Art

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