Mona Lisa Quotes

• Art is never finished, only abandoned.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Art, Mislead Us, Design

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• The Mona Lisa, to me, is the greatest emotional painting ever done. The way the smile flickers makes it a work of both art and science, because Leonardo understood optics, and the muscles of the lips, and how light strikes the eye - all of it goes into making the Mona Lisa's smile so mysterious and elusive.

  Walter Isaacson

  Art, Eye, Emotional

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• Mona Lisa is the only beauty who went through history and retained her reputation.

  Will Rogers

  History, Reputation

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• Da Vinci painted one Mona Lisa. Beethoven composed one Fifth Symphony. And God made one version of you.

  Max Lucado

  Symphony, Made, Fifth

  Max Lucado (2011). “Cure for the Common Life”, p.2, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Art, Hands, Doe

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• Mona Lisa looks as if she has just been sick, or is about to be.

  Noel Coward

  Sick, Looks, Ifs

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• Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues; you can tell by the way she smiles.

  Bob Dylan

  Way, Highways

  Song: Visions of Johanna

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• A lotta cats copy the Mona Lisa, but people still line up to see the original.

  Louis Armstrong

  Cat, People, Lines

  Alluding to his many imitators. Quoted in David Pickering Brewer's Twentieth Century Music (1994).

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• Hey, even the Mona Lisa is falling apart.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Fall, Hey, Destruction

  Read Mercer Schuchardt, Chuck Palahniuk (2008). “You do not talk about Fight Club: I am Jack's completely unauthorized essay collection”, Benbella Books

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• You should definitely visit the Louvre, a world-famous art museum where you can view, at close range, the backs of thousands of other tourists trying to see the Mona Lisa.

  Dave Barry

  Funny, Art, Humorous

  Dave Barry (2010). “Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need”, p.131, Ballantine Books

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• If I had a euro for every stupid thing I've done, I could buy the Mona Lisa.

  Stephanie Perkins

  Stupid, Done, Euro

  Stephanie Perkins (2013). “Anna and the French Kiss”, p.188, Usborne Publishing Ltd

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• Look beyond the paint. Let us try to open our minds to a new idea.

  Julia Roberts

  Ideas, Mind, Trying

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• The problem with success is that you lose the capacity to fail and the capacity to surprise people. So, if I'm able to surprise myself every day, I can surprise you as well. If I enjoy someone's work and they offer me their project, I do it. So what's the point of the supposed creativity? If Mona Lisa could be made by anyone, then it wouldn't have been the most beautiful painting in the world. The knowledge that you can fail can make you come first.

  Shahrukh Khan

  Beautiful, Creativity, People

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• I really believe that if you practice enough you could paint the 'Mona Lisa' with a two-inch brush.

  Bob Ross

  Believe, Practice, Two

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• Owning the Yankees is like owning the Mona Lisa.

  George Steinbrenner

  Yankees, Economy

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• Could Hamlet have been written by a committee, or the "Mona Lisa" painted by a club? Could the New Testament have been composed as a conference report? Creative ideas do not spring from groups. They spring from individuals. The divine spark leaps from the finger of God to the finger of Adam, whether it takes ultimate shape in a law of physics or a law of the land, a poem or a policy, a sonata or a mechanical computer.

  Alfred Whitney Griswold

  God, Spring, Creativity

  1957 Baccalaureate address, 9 Jun.

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• Inside the museum infinity goes up on trial. Voices echo, 'This is what salvation must be like after a while.' But Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues; you can tell by the way she smiles.

  Bob Dylan

  Echoes, Museums, Voice

  Song: Visions of Johanna

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• I feel like vocals are to music what portraits are to painting. They're the humanity. Landscapes are good and fine, but at the end of the day everyone loves the Mona Lisa.

  Grimes

  Humanity, The End Of The Day, Portraits

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• How could we possibly appreciate the Mona Lisa if Leonardo had written at the bottom of the canvas: 'The lady is smiling because she is hiding a secret from her lover.' This would shackle the viewer to reality, and I don't want this to happen to 2001.

  Stanley Kubrick

  Reality, Appreciate, Secret

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• You wouldn't get rid of the Mona Lisa just because someone painted another picture of a woman smiling.

  Clive Rowe

  Interview with Ryan Ormonde, www.londoncalling.com. November 21, 2015.

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• Well, is it pornography or is it art? Well as far as I'm concerned, the Mona Lisa is art.

  Shaun Micallef

  Art, Wells, Pornography

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• The curious thing about that moustache and goatee is that when you look at the Mona Lisa it becomes a man. It is not a woman disguised as a man; it is a real man, and that was my discovery, without realising it at the time.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Real, Men, Discovery

  Marcel Duchamp (2002). “Marcel Duchamp”, Hatje Cantz Pub

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• Everybody can draw, in my estimation. If you give a man 50 years, he'll come up with the Mona Lisa.

  Jack Kirby

  Men, Years, Giving

  Interview with Leonard Pitts, Jr., kirbymuseum.org. 1986/7.

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• Radical self-care is quantum, and radiates out into the atmosphere, like a little fresh air. It is a huge gift to the world. When people respond by saying, “Well, isn’t she full of herself,” smile obliquely, like Mona Lisa, and make both of you a nice cup of tea.

  Anne Lamott

  Nice, Air, Self

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• What is Mona Lisa thinking? Nothing, of course. Her blankness is her menace and our fear. [...] Walter Pater is to call her a 'vampire,' coasting through history on her secret tasks.

  Camille Paglia

  Thinking, Secret, Vampire

  "Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson". Book by Camille Paglia, 1990.

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