Art Quotes

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

Albert Einstein

Compulsion in religion is distinguished peculiarly from compulsion in every other thing. I may grow rich by art I am compelled to follow, I may recover health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own judgment, but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve

Thomas Jefferson

Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.

Ambrose Bierce

Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive.

Victor Hugo

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.

Voltaire

Art for art's sake is a philosophy of the well-fed.

Yu Cao

The question of the value of nationality in art is perhaps unsolvable.

Edward Hopper

A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; -- not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself.

Henry David Thoreau

Modernity signifies the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art of which the other half is the eternal and the immutable.

Charles Baudelaire

There is one thing one has to have: either a soul that is cheerful by nature, or a soul made cheerful by work, love, art, and knowledge.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Painting is by nature a luminous language.

Robert Delaunay

Art hurts. Art urges voyages - and it is easier to stay at home.

Gwendolyn Brooks

Gossip is the art of saying nothing in a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid.

Walter Winchell

The activity of art is... as important as the activity of language itself, and as universal.

Leo Tolstoy

Courtesy is a silver lining around the dark clouds of civilization it is the best part of refinement and in many ways, an art of heroic beauty in the vast gallery of man's cruelty and baseness.

Bryant H. McGill

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.

Edward Koch

Painting does not come from intelligence so much, as from sight and feeling and invention.

Hamerton

If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.

Vincent Van Gogh

Art is Individualism, and Individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. Therein lies its immense value. For what it seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.

Oscar Wilde

No sketches first, no studies, that

Robert Browning, The Faultless P