Art quotes

What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster!

Criticism is the windows and chandeliers of art: it illuminates the enveloping darkness in which art might otherwise rest only vaguely discernible, and perhaps altogether unseen.

Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.

Art has the power to transform, to illuminate, to educate, inspire and motivate.

Those who gave thee a body, furnished it with weakness but He who gave thee Soul, armed thee with resolution. Employ it, and thou art wise be wise and thou art happy.

We are all hungry and thirsty for concrete images. Abstract art will have been good for one thing: to restore its exact virginity to figurative art.

All humanity is passion without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those who move easiest have learned to dance.

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

The momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.

History develops, art stands still.

All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God.

One of the interesting things here is that the people who should be shaping the future are politicians. But the political framework itself is so dead and closed that people look to other sources, like artists, because art and music allow people a certain freedom.

Creative without strategy is called 'art.' Creative with strategy is called 'advertising.'

What is art? Nature concentrated.

All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent.

There is nothing new in art except talent.

When I am finishing a picture, I hold some God-made object up to it - a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand - as a final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there's a clash between the two, it's bad art.

If we know the divine art of concentration, if we know the divine art of meditation, if we know the divine art of contemplation, easily and consciously we can unite the inner world and the outer world.

It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth into a liar - that I call an achievement.