Art Quotes

On the whole, lying is a cheerful affair. Embellishments are intended to give pleasure. People long to tell you what they imagine you want to hear. They want to amuse you; they want to amuse themselves; they want to show you a good time. This is beyond hospitality. This is art.

~ Isabel Fonseca

In the world there exists no aesthetic plane, not even the aesthetic plane of goodness.

~ Clarice Lispector

What makes art Christian art? Is it simply Christian artists painting biblical subjects like Jeremiah? Or, by attaching a halo, does that suddenly make something Christian art? Must the artist’s subject be religious to be Christian? I don’t think so. There is a certain sense in which art is its own justification. If art is good art, if it is true art, if it is beautiful art, then it is bearing witness to the Author of the good, the true, and the beautiful

~ R.c. Sproul

...the law of empathy, by which he could, by his will, transfer himself into an object or a work of art, and thus inflence the outer world. He did not feel redeemed by the work he did. He did not seek redemption. He sought to see what others did not, the projection of his imagination.

~ Patti Smith

All art is abstract, because art is an abstraction of the truth.

~ Milford Zornes

The truth, the all moving magic, the single handed spark of it all wasI found art. And this saved my life.

~ Mia Hollow

I was starting to see that what looks like garbage from one angle might be art from another. Maybe it did take a crisis to get to know yourself, maybe you needed to get whacked hard by life before you understood what you wanted out of it.

~ Jodi Picoult

All works of nonfiction, or memoir, have to first and foremost be art before they can be true. They have to be artful first before they can be truthful... If you emphasize the truth-telling at the expense of art, nobody is going to be interested in it. And if you sacrifice truth in the name of art, you risk triviality. There's a constant balance between those two.

~ Alan Shapiro

There are two kinds of truth, The truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The fist of these is science and the second is art.

~ Raymond Chandler

Curiosity is the most powerful thing you own. Imagination is a force that can actually manifest a reality.

~ James Cameron

The public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities.... A fresh mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it appears they get so angry and bewildered that they always use two stupid expressions--one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral. What they mean by these words seems to me to be this. When they say a work is grossly unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly immoral, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true.

~ Oscar Wilde

Nature alone can lead to the understanding of art, just as art brings us back to nature with greater awarness. It is the source of all beauty, since it is the source of all life.

~ Eugène Carrière

I could watch him do this until morning — never asking questions and never interrupting his work. I worship quietly — his intense focus and attention to detail and then, out of no where, I realize the inconvenient, inappropriate truth: ‘I love this man… and it has swallowed me.

~ Jennifer Elisabeth

There are no lungs like the ones that breathe poetry.

~ D. Antoinette Foy

Nature is an outcry, unpolished truth; the art—a euphemism—tamed wilderness.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

I tell you, you will not see the new beauty and the truth, until you make up your minds to spit.

~ Kazimir Malevich

True art is thoughtful, emotional examination of how human themes impact the overall experience of existing. The rest is kitsch.

~ Tiffany Madison

Art does not exist only to entertain -- but also to challenge one to think, to provoke, even to disturb, in a constant search for the truth.

~ Barbra Streisand

This world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair. It is beauty, like truth, which brings joy to the heart of man and is that precious fruit which resists the year and tear of time, which unites generations and makes them share things in admiration.

~ Pope Paul Vi

Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art.

~ Charles Mccabe

Your personal truth is your gift to the world.

~ Jennifer Elisabeth

This highest kind of truth is never something the artist takes as given. It's not his point of departure but his goal. Though the artist has beliefs, like other people, he realizes that a salient characteristic of art is its radical openness to persuasion. Even those beliefs he's surest of, the artist puts under pressure to see if they will stand.

~ John Gardner

The first duty of an Author is --- I conceive --- a faithful allegiance to Truth and Nature; his second, such a conscientious study of Art as shall enable him to interpret eloquently and effectively the oracles delivered by those two great deities.--- Charlotte Bronte

~ Juliet Barker

God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things.

~ Pablo Picasso

I have no duty to be anyone's Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.

~ C.s. Lewis

Every time I create something, whether an idea or a work of art, initially, its supposed completion seems absolutely perfect to me. However the more I think about it, stare it down, the more it marinates in my soul over the hours, days, and weeks, the more flaws I start to find in it; and finally, the more I'm pressed to continue enhancing it. It essentially turns out that whatever thing a flawed and imperfect, human eye once thought was amazing begins to appear quite wretched. This is why, eternally, God cannot be impressed by mere talents or by mortal achievements. To perfect eyes, I imagine that great is not really that great; rather, humility is ultimately a human being's true greatness.

~ Criss Jami

In moments of prayer, people tend to pose as a critic and point out percieved flaws in God's art.

~ Steve Maraboli

What a comfort to know that God is a poet.

~ Rachel Held Evans

It is impossible to see how good work might be accomplished by people who think that our life in this world either signifies nothing or has only a negative significance.If, on the other hand, we believe that we are living souls, God's dust and God's breath, acting our parts among other creatures all made of the same dust and breath as ourselves; and if we understand that we are free, within the obvious limits of moral human life, to do evil or good to ourselves and to the other creatures - then all our acts have a supreme significance. If it is true that we are living souls and morally free, then all of us are artists. All of us are makers, within mortal terms and limits, of our lives, of one another's lives, of things we need and use...If we think of ourselves as living souls, immortal creatures, living in the midst of a Creation that is mostly mysterious, and if we see that everything we make or do cannot help but have an everlasting significance for ourselves, for others, and for the world, then we see why some religious teachers have understood work as a form of prayer...Work connects us both to Creation and to eternity. (pg. 316, Christianity and the Survival of Creation)

~ Wendell Berry

I suddenly knew that religion, God - something beyond everyday life - was there to be found, provided one is really willing. And I saw that though what I felt in the church was only imagination, it was a step on the way; because imagination itself can be a kind of willingness - a pretense that things are real, due to one's longing for them. It struck me that this was somehow tied up with what the Vicar said about religion being an extension of art - and then I had a glimpse of how religion can really cure you of sorrow; somehow make use of it, turn it to beauty, just as art can make sad things beautiful. I found myself saying: 'Sacrifice is the secret - you have to sacrifice things for art and it's the same with religion; and then the sacrifice turns out to be a gain.' Then I got confused and I couldn't hold on to what I meant - until Miss Blossom remarked: 'Nonsense, duckie - it's prefectly simple. You lose yourself in something beyond yourself and it's a lovely rest.'I saw that, all right. Then I thought: 'But that's how Miss Marcy cured her sorrow, too - only she lost herself in other people instead of in religion.' Which way of life was best - hers or the Vicar's? I decided that he loves God and merely likes the villagers, whereas she loves the villagers and merely likes God - and then I suddenly wondered if I could combine both ways, love God and my neighbor equally. Was I really willing to?

~ Dodie Smith

If you can change the way you think in time you will notice a change in your heart and also a change in your life and the way you see things.

~ The Prolific Penman

If you can't focus then how do you expect to make your dreams come true?

~ The Prolific Penman

Prayer is an insurance policy that you can never lapse on.

~ The Prolific Penman

A steampunk nationBaby pollution rises up then the loving comes arraigning 'causeOur art's official and only partially artificialAnd our heart's in the middle of sharp hardened shards of metal butThere's not where it settlesBecause it's beating to the steaming of God's hottest pot or kettleAnd now we face it, this creation we made toTo save our craving for a synthetic rebelnation it'sOur safeway they make into a pathetic revelationIn our steampunk nationOur steampunk nation

~ Criss Jami

God is love, I said, but art's the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.

~ Ralph Ellison

when god creat the world,first he must think abour architects

~ Ashok Sharma

Every form of art is another way of seeing the world. Another perspective, another window. And science –that’s the most spectacular window of all. You can see the entire universe from there.

~ Claudia Gray

Clear thinking at the wrong moment can stifle creativity.

~ Karl Lagerfeld

We need houses as we need clothes, architecture stimulates fashion. It’s like hunger and thirst — you need them both.

~ Karl Lagerfeld

Fashion and music are the same, because music express its period too.

~ Karl Lagerfeld