Great Art Quotes - Page 5

• Excellence in art is to be attained only by active effort, and not by passive impressions; by the manly overcoming of difficulties, by patient struggle against adverse circumstance, by the thrifty use of moderate opportunities. The great artists were not rocked and dandled into eminence, but they attained to it by that course of labor and discipline which no man need go to Rome or Paris or London to enter upon.

  George Stillman Hillard

  Art, Struggle, Men

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• I wish I was a great writer or a great journalist or a great scientist or a great artist; I'm not.

  Nicolas Berggruen

  Artist, Wish, Scientist

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• We know great art by its effect on us. If we are prepared to look without preconceptions, without defenses, without haste, then art will change us.

  Wendy Beckett

  Art, Haste, Defense

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• I cannot be convinced that great artists are moralists. Art is first appearances, then meaning.

  Camille Paglia

  Art, Firsts, Appearance

  Camille Paglia (1990). “Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson”, p.166, Yale University Press

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• Architecture isman'sgreat sense of himself embodied in a world of his own making. It may rise as high in quality only as its source because great art isgreat life.

  Frank Lloyd Wright

  Art, Quality, World

  1930 In Frederick Gutheim (ed) Frank Lloyd Wright on Architecture: selected writings (1894-1940).

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• The great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him, rather than that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know, and then the great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and makes something of his own.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Art, Men, Use

  Ernest Hemingway (2014). “The Hemingway Collection”, p.2248, Simon and Schuster

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• Economy is the first and great article (economy such as I understand it) in my financial creed. The controversy between direct and indirect taxation holds a minor, though important place.

  William E. Gladstone

  Important, Taxation, Firsts

  Letter to his brother Robertson of the Financial Reform Association at Liverpool in 1859. "Gladstone as Financier and Economist" by F. W. Hirst, p. 241, 1931.

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• I've always had standards about writing well. There is art in this business. There is potentially great art.

  Gay Talese

  Art, Writing, Journalism

  "Lecture: Gay Talese". Bullpen: NYU Journalism, September 14, 2006.

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• It is necessary that... we should believe that we are as capable of producing great art as we believe we are capable of doing great deeds.

  Arthur Lismer

  Art, Believe, Deeds

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• I don't know of a great artist who did not sacrifice and thereby have to wrestle with the depths of loneliness and sadness.

  Cornel West

  Loneliness, Sadness, Sacrifice

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• The great artist is conscious of the talent and power he possesses otherwise he would not see his faults and so would not be able to improve.

  Henri Gaudier-Brzeska

  Artist, Able, Faults

  Letter to Sophie Brzeska-Savage Messiah By H S (Jim) Ede Heinimann, 1931.

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• It's not curators, it's not critics, it's not the public, it's not collectors who find great artists - it's other artists.

  David Galenson

  Artist, Recognition, Curator

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• When one has praised Turgenev, however, for the beauty of his character and the beautiful truth of his art, one remembers that he, too, was human and therefore less than perfect. His chief failing was, perhaps, that of all the great artists, he was the most lacking in exuberance. That is why he began to be scorned in a world which rated exuberance higher than beauty or love or pity.

  Robert Wilson Lynd

  Beautiful, Art, Character

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• Ultimately, it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you're doing. Picasso had a saying: good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas, and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.

  Steve Jobs

  Inspiring, Memorable, Thinking

  "The Television Program Transcripts: Part III". www.pbs.org.

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• In war there is but one favorable moment; the great art is to seize it!

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Art, Military, War

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• It's very true that an artist who networks well will have better opportunities than one who doesn't network well. But great networking skills without great art won't change art history.

  Mark Kostabi

  Art, Opportunity, Skills

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• You can't get anywhere without incredible passion, because if you're an entrepreneur, there's gonna be a lot of bumps in the road. A great artist has to do their art. There's nothing that can stop them from doing it. They just have to get it out there. It's the same thing for an entrepreneur. If you don't feel that way, then you're probably not really an entrepreneur.

  Trip Hawkins

  Art, Passion, Entrepreneur

  "The 'I Am' Q&A". www.cnbc.com.

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• What if Van Gogh had taken medication for his mental illness? Would the world have been deprived of a great artist?

  Peter D. Kramer

  Taken, Artist, What If

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• There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face. ... It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth ... into a liar - that I call an achievement.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Art, Liars, Believe

  "Aphorisms" by Georg C. Lichtenberg, ("Notebook E", E 59), (1775 - 1776).

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• I said to Mr. Pavarotti once ... a marvelous man and a great artist ... I said to him ... "Maestro, I'm having trouble closing out a note so that it's almost as thin as a butter knife ... finish it out quietly like that." I said, "I have trouble doing that. What do you think I should do?" He said, "Justa close up your mouth." That's all he said, and I fell on the floor. I thought he was gonna give me a dissertation.

  Frank Sinatra

  Artist, Men, Thinking

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• It is so important for me to keep authentic Cuban sounds alive. All of these great artists have changed the landscape of Latin music and it's an honor to have them on this album ["90 Millas," released in September of 2007]. I believe this album will expose a new generation to the richness of Cuban music.

  Gloria Estefan

  Latin, Believe, Artist

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• For every good art critic there may be ten great artists.

  Clement Greenberg

  Art, May, Very Good

  1991 In the NewYork Times, 3 Oct.

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• The works of the great artists are silent books of eternal truths.

  Stefan Zweig

  Art, Book, Silent

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• No longer can we consider what the artist does to be a self-contained activity, mysteriously inspired from above, unrelated and unrelatable to other human activities. Instead, we recognize the exalted kind of seeing that leads to the creation of great art as an outgrowth of the humbler and more common activity of the eyes in everyday life. Just as the prosaic search for information is "artistic" because it involves giving and finding shape and meaning, so the artist's conceiving is an instrument of life, a refined way of understanding who and where we are.

  Rudolf Arnheim

  Art, Eye, Self

  Rudolf Arnheim (2004). “Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye”, p.5, Univ of California Press

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• The prevarication and white lies which a mind that keeps itself ambitiously pure is as uneasy under as a great artist under the false touches that no eye detects but his own, are worn as lightly as mere trimmings when once the actions have become a lie.

  George Eliot

  Lying, Eye, Artist

  George Eliot (1869). “Silas Marner and Scenes of Clerical Life”, p.73

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