Art Quotes

Art is Man's nature. Nature is god's art.  ~ James Bailey


Art is the lie that reveals the truth.  ~ Pablo Picasso


The greatest benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet, or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies.... Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot.  ~ George Eliot


Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.  ~ Pablo Picasso


Architecture begins where engineering ends.  ~ Walter Gropius


I dream my painting and I paint my dream.  ~ Vincent van Gogh


It's not art for art's sake, it's art for my sake.  ~ D.H. Lawrence


I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.  ~ Michelangelo


A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.  ~ Oscar Wilde


A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.  ~ Michelangelo


The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.  ~ William Faulkner


Art is the proper task of life.  ~ Friedrich Nietzsche


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


Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.  ~ Pablo Picasso


Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.  ~ Woody Allen


A picture cab become for us a highway between a particular thing and a universal feeling.  ~ Lawren Harris


All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.  ~ Albert Einstein


Art is the signature of civilizations.  ~ Beverly Sills


Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.  ~ Oscar Wilde


Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.  ~ Leonardo da Vinci


Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.  ~ George Bernard Shaw


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


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


Art and revolt will die only with the last man.  ~ Albert Camus


Bad artists always admire each others work.  ~ Oscar Wilde


Drawing is speaking to the eye; talking is painting to the ear.  ~ Joseph Joubert


I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.  ~ Albert Einstein


People think I'm an artist because my films lose money.  ~ Woody Allen


Every work of art is an uncommited crime.  ~ Theodor W. Adorno


Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.  ~ Oscar Wilde


The old and new testaments are the great code of art.  ~ William Blake


Every artist was first an amateur.  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson


The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.  ~ Abraham Lincoln


A great artist is always before his time or behind it.  ~ George Moore


Creativity takes courage.  ~ Henri Matisse


Art is anything you can get away with.  ~ Marshall McLuhan


It's easy to attack and destroy an act of creation. It's a lot more difficult to perform one.  ~ Chuck Palahniuk


Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.  ~ Leonardo da Vinci


A photographer is like a cod, which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity.  ~ George Bernard Shaw


True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.  ~ Albert Einstein


The object of art is to give life shape.  ~ Jean Anouilh


A subject that is beautiful in itself gives no suggestion to the artist. It lacks imperfection.  ~ Oscar Wilde


Art is not a thing; it is a way.  ~ Elbert Hubbard


The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.  ~ Francis Bacon


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


Art is I, science is we.  ~ Claude Bernard


Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.  ~ Oscar Wilde


The real artist's work is a surprise to himself.  ~ Robert Henri


The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands.  ~ Leonardo da Vinci


As the sun colors flowers, so does art color life.  ~ John Lubbock


Everything you can imagine is real.  ~ Pablo Picasso


It's the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.  ~ Oscar Wilde


When I was a kis I drew like Michelangelo. It took me years to learn to draw like a kid.  ~ Pablo Picasso


It has been said that art is a tryst, for in the joy of it maker and beholder meet.  ~ Kojiro Tomita


As far as I am concerned, a painting speaks for itself. What is the use of giving explanations, when all is said and done?  A painter has only one language.  ~ Pablo Picasso


Artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson


Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.  ~ Susan Sontag


Is an artist much more than a beggar?  ~ Clara Schumann


There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.  ~ Vincent van Gogh


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


Art is a delayed echo.  ~ George Santayana


Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.  ~ Oscar Wilde


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


Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.  ~ Twyla Tharp


A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.  ~ Leonardo da Vinci


Art not only imitates nature, but also completes its deficiencies.  ~ Aristotle


The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.  ~ Robert Henri


Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terror, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.  ~ Anaïs Nin


It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.  ~ Anaïs Nin


Art is never finished, only abandoned.  ~ Leonardo da Vinci


Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.  ~ Stella Adler


We artists are indestructible; even in a prison, or in a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art, even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell.  ~ Pablo Picasso


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


Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.  ~ Thomas Merton


A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.  ~ Leonardo da Vinci


We have art in order not to die of life.  ~ Albert Camus


My imagination can picture no fairer happiness than to continue living for art.  ~ Clara Schumann


Art should cause violence to be set aside and it is only art that can accomplish this. ~ Leo Tolstoy


We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.  ~ Pablo Picasso