Great Artist Quotes

• What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit.

  John Updike

  Teacher, Appreciation, Art

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

  Stella Adler

  Life, Music, Crush

  Stella Adler (2012). “Stella Adler on America's Master Playwrights: Eugene O'Neill, Thornton Wilder, Clifford Odets, William Saroyan, Tennessee Williams, William Inge, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee”, p.11, Vintage

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• Everything you can imagine is real.

  Pablo Picasso

  Inspirational, Meaningful, Art

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• Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.

  Twyla Tharp

  Music, Dance, Running

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• Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.

  Thomas Merton

  Art, Fools Day, Finding Yourself

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.35, Shambhala Publications

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• Great art picks up where nature ends.

  Marc Chagall

  Art, Ends, Artist

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• A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.

  Paul Cezanne

  Art, Creativity, Emotion

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• The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

  Aristotle

  Art, Philosophy, Philosophical

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• The greater the artist, the greater the doubt; perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.

  Robert Hughes

  Inspirational, Motivational, Art

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• Art is like a border of flowers along the course of civilization.

  Lincoln Steffens

  Art, Flower, Civilization

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• I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

  John Steinbeck

  Inspirational, Education, Teacher

  John Steinbeck (2003). “America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction”, p.123, Penguin

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• A great artist is a great man in a great child.

  Victor Hugo

  Wisdom, Children, Artist

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

  Walt Whitman

  Happiness, Art, Sunshine

  Walt Whitman (2007). “Leaves of Grass: The Original 1855 Edition”, p.10, Courier Corporation

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• The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.

  Lucian Freud

  Motivational, Art, Real

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• One of the surest tests of the superiority or inferiority of a poet is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.

  T. S. Eliot

  Art, Unique, Stealing Things

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• Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

  John Steinbeck

  Teacher, Art, Teaching

  John Steinbeck (2003). “America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction”, p.123, Penguin

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• Painting is an attempt to come to terms with life. There are as many solutions as there are human beings

  George Tooker

  Life, Art, Inspire

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• The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

  Willa Cather

  Life, Beautiful, Truth

  Willa Cather (2012). “The Song of the Lark”, p.305, Courier Corporation

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• Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.

  Amy Lowell

  Art, Men, Expression

  Amy Lowell (1931). “Tendencies in Modern American Poetry”, p.7, Ardent Media

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• Art is indeed not the bread but the wine of life.

  Jean Paul

  Art, Wine, Bread

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, (pp. 43-45), 1922.

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• The greater the artist, the greater the doubt.

  Robert Hughes

  Artist, Doubt, Inspirational Art

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• Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.

  T. S. Eliot

  Stealing Things, Immature, Different

  1920 The Sacred Wood,'Philip Massinger'.

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• The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Religious, Art, Religion

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• Drawing is not what you see but what you must make others see.

  Edgar Degas

  Beauty, Dance, Art

  "The shop-talk of Edgar Degas".

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• Not everyone can become a great artist; but a great artist *can* come from *anywhere*.

  Peter O'Toole

  Food, Artist, Ego

  "Fictional character: Anton Ego". "Ratatouille", www.imdb.com. June 22, 2007.

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