Quotes about art

"Have thy heart in heaven and thy hands upon the earth. Ascend in piety and descend in charity. For this is the Nature of Light and the way of the children."

Vaughan, Thomas on art   

"The eyes see what the heart loves. If the heart loves God and is single in this devotion, then the eyes will see God whether others see Him or not."

Wiersbe, Warren on art   

"Had we never lov'd sae kindly, Had we never lov'd sae blindly, Never met -- or never parted -- we had never been broken-hearted."

Burns, Robert on art
5 fans of this quote   

"It isn't enough for your heart to break because everybody's heart is broken now."

Ginsberg, Allen on art
8 fans of this quote   

"Don't waste time trying to break a man's heart; be satisfied if you can just manage to chip it in a brand new place."

Rowland, Helen on art   

"It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace."

Shaw, George Bernard on art
8 fans of this quote   

"A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income."

Shaw, George Bernard on art   

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"How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?"

Wilde, Oscar on art
12 fans of this quote   

"If we keep an open mind, too much is likely to fall into it."

Barney, Natalie Clifford on art   

"Impartial. Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy."

Bierce, Ambrose on art   

"What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on art   

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"Our impartiality is kept for abstract merit and demerit, which none of us ever saw."

Eliot, George on art   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Balance is the enemy of art."

Eyre, Richard on art   

"Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on art   

"Art is permitted to survive only if it renounces the right to be different, and integrates itself into the omnipotent realm of the profane."

Adorno, Theodor W. on art
4 fans of this quote   

"Twentieth-century art may start with nothing, but it flourishes by virtue of its belief in itself, in the possibility of control over what seems essentially uncontrollable, in the coherence of the inchoate, and in its ability to create its own values."

Alvarez, A. on art   

"Art is an experience, not the formulation of a problem."

Anderson, Lindsay on art
3 fans of this quote   

"Artists are, above all, men who want to become inhuman."

Apollinaire, Guillaume on art
3 fans of this quote   

"Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere."

Apollinaire, Guillaume on art   

"Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother's womb."

Arp, Jean on art   

"The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone."

Baldwin, James on art
4 fans of this quote   

"Pop artists deal with the lowly trivia of possessions and equipment that the present generation is lugging along with it on its safari into the future."

Ballard, J. G. on art   

"The first mistake of Art is to assume that it's serious."

Bangs, Lester on art   

"Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity."

Barenboim, Daniel on art
3 fans of this quote   

"The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure"

Baryshnikov, Mikhail on art
5 fans of this quote   

"Art distills sensations and embodies it with enhanced meaning."

Barzun, Jacques on art   

"A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else."

Baudelaire, Charles on art   

"The more a man cultivates the arts the less he fornicates. A more and more apparent cleavage occurs between the spirit and the brute."

Baudelaire, Charles on art   

"As the twentieth century ends, commerce and culture are coming closer together. The distinction between life and art has been eroded by fifty years of enhanced communications, ever-improving reproduction technologies and increasing wealth."

Bayley, Stephen on art   

"In order for the artist to have a world to express he must first be situated in this world, oppressed or oppressing, resigned or rebellious, a man among men."

Beauvoir, Simone De on art   

"I'm the artist formally known as Beck. I have a genius wig. When I put that wig on, then the true genius emerges. I don't have enough hair to be a genius. I think you have to have hair going everywhere."

Beck on art   

"Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?"

Beethoven, Ludwig Van on art   

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"No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist."

Beethoven, Ludwig Van on art
3 fans of this quote   

"As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn't make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting -- the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near."

Bellow, Saul on art   

"Any artist should be grateful for a na?ve grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately."

Bellow, Saul on art   

"The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion."

Benjamin, Walter on art   

"I can't tell you what art does and how it does it, but I know that often art has judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past suffered, so that it has never been forgotten. Art, when it functions like this, becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring, guts, and honor."

Berger, John on art   

"What is art but a way of seeing?"

Berger, Thomas on art
4 fans of this quote   

"The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge."

Berle, Adolf on art
4 fans of this quote   

"The artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business."

Berryman, John on art