1,029 Quotes Regarding Art


An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.
Paul Valery

I don't want to be interesting. I want to be good.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.
Michelangelo

Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.
John Ruskin

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

Even a true artist does not always produce art.
Carroll O'Connor

An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.
George Santayana

If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye.
Honore de Balzac

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
Dorothea Lange

To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.
Leo Tolstoy

Painting is an infinitely minute part of my personality.
Salvador Dali

A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.
Gertrude Stein

I cry out for order and find it only in art.
Helen Hayes

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.
John Ruskin

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.
Walt Whitman

Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.
Ansel Adams

Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.
W. Somerset Maugham

There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.
Ansel Adams

The arts are an even better barometer of what is happening in our world than the stock market or the debates in congress.
Hendrik Willem Van Loon