Art Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Already nature is serving all those uses which science slowly derives on a much higher and grander scale to him that will be served by her. When the sunshine falls on the path of the poet, he enjoys all those pure benefits and pleasures which the arts slowly and partially realize from age to age. The winds which fan his cheek waft him the sum of that profit and happiness which their lagging inventions supply.

Henry David Thoreau

Art is not tame, and Nature is not wild, in the ordinary sense. A perfect work of man's art would also be wild or natural in a good sense.

Henry David Thoreau

Understanding like the eye; whilst it makes us see and perceive all things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance and make it its own subject.

There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

You always have to keep pushing to innovate. Dylan could have sung protest songs forever and probably made a lot of money, but he didn't. He had to move on, and when he did, by going electric in 1965, he alienated a lot of people. His 1966 Europe tour was his greatest…. The Beatles were the same way. They kept evolving, moving, refining their art. That's what I've always tried to do — keep moving. Otherwise, as Dylan says, if you are not busy being born, you're busy dying.

The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Everything you have is to give. Thou art a phenomenon of philosophy and an unfortunate man.

Ernest Hemingway

Wind is the loving Wooer of waters; Wind blends together Billows all-foaming. Spirit of man, Thou art like unto water! Fortune of man, Thou art like unto wind!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Science is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon eternal truths. Art is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon things beautiful and immortal and ever-changing.

Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art.

Henry David Thoreau

True art takes note not merely of form but also of what lies behind.

It is a gratification to me to know that I am ignorant of art... Because people who understand art find nothing in pictures but blemishes...

What of Art? -It is a malady. —Love? -An Illusion. —Religion? -The fashionable substitute for Belief. —You are a sceptic. -Never! Scepticism is the beginning of Faith. —What are you? -To define is to limit.

What humiliation when someone who stood next to me heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or when someone heard the shepherd boy singing and again I heard nothing. Such misfortune brought me to the edge of despair, and I might have brought an end to my life—only my art held me back.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Art that submits to orthodoxy, to even the soundest doctrines, but lacks imagination and deep self-expression is lost leaving only the craftsmanship.

Do not imitate one another's style. If you do, so far as your art is concerned you will be called a grandson, rather than the son of Nature.

Leonardo da Vinci

Art is the uniting of the subjective with the objective, of nature with reason, of the unconscious with the conscious, and therefore art is the highest means of knowledge.

These arts open great gates of a future, promising to make the world plastic and to lift human life out of its beggary to a god- like ease and power.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men are further beholding... generally to chance, or anything else, than to logic, for the invention or arts and sciences.

Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.

We have our arts, the ancients had theirs... We cannot raise obelisks a hundred feet high in a single piece, but our meridians are more exact.

I don't do it for the money. I've got enough, much more than I'll ever need. I do it to do it. Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That's how I get my kicks.

Alas, sir, how fell you besides your five wits?" Malvolio: "Fool, there was never a man so notoriously abused. I am as well in my wits, fool, as thou art." Feste: "But as well? Then you are mad indeed, if you be no better in you wits than a fool.

William Shakespeare

Ironic philosophies produce passionate works.
Any thought that abandons unity glorifies diversity! And diversity is the home of art. The only thought to liberate the mind is that which leaves it alone, certain of its limits and of its impending end. No doctrine tempts it. It awaits the ripening of the work and of life.

The history of an art is the history of master-work, not of failures, or mediocrity.