No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist.
—Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Composer, Musician
Art is the child of Nature; yes, her darling child, in whom we trace the features of the mother’s face, her aspect and her attitude.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic
Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors?
—Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) South African Novelist, Short-Story Writer
It is not in life, but in art that self-fulfillment is to be found.
—George Edward Woodberry (1855–1930) American Literary Critic, Poet
I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.
—William S. Burroughs (1914–97) American Novelist, Poet, Short Story Writer, Painter
Art never improves, but the material of art is never quite the same.
—T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) American-born British Poet, Dramatist, Literary Critic
The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.
—Andre Gide (1869–1951) French Novelist
There is in fact no such thing as art for art’s sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause.
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chinese Statesman
There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.
—Salvador Dali (1904–89) Spanish Painter
In free society art is not a weapon. Artists are not engineers of the soul.
—John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist
The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art’s audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.
—Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist Painter
Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.
—Daniel Barenboim (b.1942) Israeli Pianist, Conductor
Art is the only thing that can go on mattering, once it has stopped hurting.
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) Irish Novelist, Short-story Writer
Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French Novelist
One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French Poet, Playwright, Film Director
Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.
—Henry Miller (1891–1980) American Novelist
I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don’t need.
—Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French Sculptor
Art is the signature of civilizations.
—Beverly Sills (1929–2007) American Singer, Musician
The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.
—Walter Benjamin
The creative artist seems to be almost the only kind of man that you could never meet on neutral ground. You can only meet him as an artist. He sees nothing objectively because his own ego is always in the foreground of every picture.
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) American Novelist
An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-born British Novelist
A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind.
—Eugene Ionesco (1909–94) Romanian-born French Dramatist
It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to the feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.
—Vincent van Gogh (1853–90) Dutch Painter
If that’s art, I’m a Hottentot!
—Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) American Head of State
A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.
—Michelangelo (1475–1564) Italian Painter, Sculptor, Architect, Poet, Engineer
Art is man’s expression of his joy in labor.
—William Morris (1834–96) British Designer, Craftsman, Poet, Writer
Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.
—Kenneth Tynan (1927–80) English Theatre Critic, Writer
Art is a form of catharsis.
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American Humorist, Journalist
Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-born British Novelist
With an apple I will astonish Paris.
—Paul Cezanne (1839–1906) French Painter
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart, till the Devil whispered behind the leaves “It’s pretty, but is it Art?”
—Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) British Children’s Books Writer, Short story, Novelist, Poet, Journalist
Pop artists deal with the lowly trivia of possessions and equipment that the present generation is lugging along with it on its safari into the future.
—J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) English Novelist, Short Story Writer
An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–66) British Novelist, Essayist, Biographer
If I didn’t start painting, I would have raised chickens.
—Grandma Moses (1860–1961) American Painter, Artist
Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Artist
As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn’t make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting—the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.
—Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-American Novelist
It is either easy or impossible.
—Salvador Dali (1904–89) Spanish Painter
I see little of more importance to the future of our country and of civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.
—John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist
Artists are, above all, men who want to become inhuman.
—Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) Italian-born French Poet, Playwright
Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.
—Rebecca West (1892–1983) English Author, Journalist, Literary Critic
Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature’s monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere.
—Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) Italian-born French Poet, Playwright
To write is to become disinterested. There is a certain renunciation in art.
—Albert Camus (1913–60) Algerian-born French Philosopher, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist, Author
I don’t want life to imitate art. I want life to be art.
—Carrie Fisher (1956–2016) American Actress, Author
Humanity is the rich effluvium, it is the waste and the manure and the soil, and from it grows the tree of the arts.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic
It is impossible to give a clear account of the world, but art can teach us to reproduce it—just as the world reproduces itself in the course of its eternal gyrations. The primordial sea indefatigably repeats the same words and casts up the same astonished beings on the same sea-shore.
—Albert Camus (1913–60) Algerian-born French Philosopher, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist, Author
Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.
—Winston Churchill (1874–1965) British Head of State, Political leader, Historian, Journalist, Author
What is art but life upon the larger scale, the higher. When, graduating up in a spiral line of still expanding and ascending gyres, it pushes toward the intense significance of all things, hungry for the infinite?
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–61) English Poet