Art Quotes

...the mode by which he heard the universe and projected it far beyond himself. Perhaps it was in this, I said to Albertine, this unknown quality of a unique world which no other composer had ever yet revealed, that the most authentic proof of genius lies, even more than in the content of the work itself. Even in literature?” Albertine inquired. “Even in literature.” And thinking again of the sameness of Vinteuil’s works, I explained to Albertine that the great men of letters have never created more than a single work, or rather have never done more than refract through various media an identical beauty which they bring into the world. “If it were not so late, my sweet,” I said to her, “I would show you this quality in all the writers whose works you read while I’m asleep, I would show you the same identity as in Vinteuil. These key-phrases, which you are beginning to recognise as I do, my little Albertine, the same in the sonata, in the septet, in the other works, would be, say for instance in Barbey dAurevilly, a hidden reality revealed by a physical sign, the physiological blush...

~ Marcel Proust

The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way. (There is no good asking first whether the work before you deserves such a surrender, for until you have surrendered you cannot possibly find out.)

~ C.s. Lewis

An artist is the magician put among men to gratify--capriciously--their urge for immortality. The temples are built and brought down around him, continuously and contiguously, from Troy to the fields of Flanders. If there is any meaning in any of it, it is in what survives as art, yes even in the celebration of tyrants, yes even in the celebration of nonentities. What now of the Trojan War if it had been passed over by the artist's touch? Dust. A forgotten expedition prompted by Greek merchants looking for new markets. A minor redistribution of broken pots. But it is we who stand enriched, by a tale of heroes, of a golden apple, a wooden horse, a face that launched a thousand ships--and above all, of Ulysses, the wanderer, the most human, the most complete of all heroes--husband, father, son, lover, farmer, soldier, pacifist, politician, inventor and adventurer...

~ Tom Stoppard

Writing, painting, singing--it cannot stop everything. Cannot halt death in its tracks. But perhaps it can make the pause between death's footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of waiting a place where you can linger without as much fear. For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives.

~ Ally Condie

The world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature.

~ C.s. Lewis

Do you know why teachers use me? Because I speak in tongues. I write metaphors. Every one of my stories is a metaphor you can remember. The great religions are all metaphor. We appreciate things like Daniel and the lion’s den, and the Tower of Babel. People remember these metaphors because they are so vivid you can’t get free of them and that’s what kids like in school. They read about rocket ships and encounters in space, tales of dinosaurs. All my life I’ve been running through the fields and picking up bright objects. I turn one over and say, Yeah, there’s a story. And that’s what kids like. Today, my stories are in a thousand anthologies. And I’m in good company. The other writers are quite often dead people who wrote in metaphors: Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne. All these people wrote for children. They may have pretended not to, but they did.

~ Ray Bradbury

Rap in its form is poetry, meaning the point of convergence is words.

~ Unarine Ramaru

Writing is an abstract art of drawing pictures of the conscious and subconscious mind with words.

~ Debasish Mridha

Anyone that says his mind will be probably regarded a fool, but the true artist is not moved by the comments about the looks of his painting or remarks that are dreadfully sarcastic, but hearken now! That he who says what others want to hear hasn't said anything of his own.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

The sky never falls with the rain. It is never weighed down by all that it carries. It takes all of its anchorsand turns them into stars. Learn from this.

~ D. Antoinette Foy

I am in awe of flowers. Not because of their colors, but because even though they have dirt in their roots, they still grow. They still bloom.

~ D. Antoinette Foy

What is the finding of love, but a voice answering a voice?

~ D. Antoinette Foy

Life is so beautiful and so short that anything that makes me feel less than too much is nothing at all.

~ D. Antoinette Foy

Take each day in your open palms and close your fists around it. This life is not done with you yet.

~ D. Antoinette Foy

Art, its completeness, its formedness, its finishedness, had no power to console. Words, on the other hand, were a lifeline.

~ Diane Setterfield

PoemWords from the heartBreaking, teaching, healingThe deepest, purest form of artFeeling

~ Esther Spurrill Jones

...art is weaker than life - in the end I have a bag of letters to scrabble into order - rune tiles to cast my fate...

~ John Geddes

He lifted his shirt, and on his back was the White Rabbit, wearing his waistcoat and looking at his watch. It was just like the illustration from the book. Only standing next to him, back-to-back, was another White Rabbit wearing a leather motercycle jacket and boots and smoking a cigar.

~ Michael Thomas Ford

An observant friend will recognize the signs of the rise of grief: eyes that easily well with tears, a smile that is difficult to sustain, a tendency to withdraw. And ultimately, perhaps we each need to create our own symbol of grieving — to wear our version of black, or maybe to color with black crayons for a while.

~ Sandy Oshiro Rosen

You haunt my days and dreams.

~ Jennifer Elisabeth

The core of your true self is never lost. Let go of all the pretending and the becoming you've done just to belong.Curl up with your rawness and come home. You don't have to find yourself, you just have to let yourself in.

~ D. Antoinette Foy

I want to celebrate the sadness that makes you feel everything so deeply. I want to throw a party for the wounds that make you so unabashedly human.

~ D. Antoinette Foy

If I were you I'd put that away. See you're just wasted and thinking about the past again, darling you'll be okay.

~ Pierce The Veil

Strolling on the plateau of life, desperate for the mountain, I never thought that I would get this far. It's only art that has carried me through, given me faith in my own existence. But now I am approaching a point in my life where I desire more...

~ Tracey Emin

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation p

~ Robert Hughes

Prayer Against the DarknessShekhinaPray for us now bound with scripture and shielded with shawlArmed with passion and loving carePray for us now against suffering, turmoil, and injusticePray for us now against the chaos of the dark.

~ Leonard Nimoy

The transcendental face of art is always a form of prayer.

~ John Berger

Art and prayer are the only decent ejaculations of the soul.

~ Joris-Karl Huysmans

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

~ Steve Maraboli

Documenting little details of your everyday life becomes a celebration of who you are.

~ Carolyn V. Hamilton

Art is an other door to IMAGINATION. And without imagination nothing is possible.

~ Mhq

I never knew him. We both knew this place, apparently, this literal small backwater, looked at it long enough to memorize it, our years apart. How strange. And it's still loved, or its memory is (it must have changed a lot). Our visions coincided--'visions' is too serious a word--our looks, two looks: art 'copying from life' and life itself, life and the memory of it so compressed they've turned into each other. Which is which? Life and the memory of it cramped, dim, on a piece of Bristol board, dim, but how live, how touching in detail --the little that we get for free, the little of our earthly trust. Not much. About the size of our abidance along with theirs: the munching cows, the iris, crisp and shivering, the water still standing from spring freshets, the yet-to-be-dismantled elms, the geese.

~ Elizabeth Bishop

LIVING your life and NOT acting it is the true art.

~ Mykyta Isagulov

All I wanted was my art and the chance to be the creator of my own world, my own reality.

~ Charlotte Eriksson

The more one suffered and lived, the more one had known of joy and grief, the deeper the response must be if an artist were great enough to summon it.

~ Rachel Field

What if at school you had to take an art class in which you were only taught how to pain a fence? What if you were never shown the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci and Picasso? Would that make you appreciate art? Would you want to learn more about it? I doubt it...Of course this sounds ridiculous, but this is how math is taught.

~ Edward Frenkel

With great enthusiasm and determination you will master the art in your field.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

File Under General Wisdom: You want to know the difference between a master and a beginner?The master has failed more times than the beginner has tried.

~ Anonymous Facebook

... because one day, maybe one day, if I learned how to write clear enough, sing loud enough, be strong enough, I could explain myself in a way that made sense and then maybe one day, one day, someone out there would hear and recognise her or himself and I could let them know that they are not alone. Just like that song I had on repeat for several nights as I walked lonely on empty streets, let me know that I was notaloneand that’s how it starts.

~ Charlotte Eriksson

The best teaching is often both an intellectual creation and a performing art.

~ Ken Bain