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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• Great artists suffer for the people.

  Marvin Gaye

  Artist, People, Suffering

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• The great artist is the simplifier.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Writing, Artist, Great Art

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• We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.

  Steve Jobs

  Ideas, Best Job, Small Jobs

  "Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires". PBS Documentary, 1996.

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• Desire is not what you see, but what you imagine.

  Paulo Coelho

  Life, Art, Inspiration

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• Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Inspiring, Art, Architecture

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Good artists copy, great artists steal.

  Pablo Picasso

  Creativity, Artist, Small Jobs

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• Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

  Pablo Picasso

  Life, Motivational, Music

  "LIFE", Vol. 57, nr. 11, (p. 9), September 11, 1964.

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• It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.

  Pablo Picasso

  Art, Children, Years

  "The Drum Perspective". Book by Peter Erskine and ‎Rick Mattingly (p. 73), 1998.

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• Picasso had a saying - 'good artists copy, great artists steal' - and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.

  Walter Isaacson

  Inspirational, Artist, Small Jobs

  Walter Isaacson (2011). “Walter Isaacson Great Innovators e-book boxed set: Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, Einstein”, p.147, Simon and Schuster

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• No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Business, Acting

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.755, GENERAL PRESS

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• For great things do not done just happen by impulse but are a succession of small things linked together.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Inspirational, Motivational, Perseverance

  Letter to Theo van Gogh from The Hague, www.webexhibits.org. October 22, 1882.

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• Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.

  Andre Gide

  Spiritual, Art, Creative Collaboration

  "The Millionaire Rig Veda" by Timothy James Brearton, (p. 40), 2012.

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• Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

  T. S. Eliot

  Art, Writing, Reading Poetry

  The Sacred Wood "Philip Massinger" (1920)

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• The bad artists imitate, the great artists steal.

  Banksy

  Artist, Stealing, Great Art

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• To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final blow the coup de grace for the painter as well as for the picture.

  Pablo Picasso

  Art, Mean, Blow

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• A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.

  T. S. Eliot

  Artist, Immature, Aliens

  T. S. Eliot (1998). “The Sacred Wood and Major Early Essays”, p.72, Courier Corporation

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• The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion.

  T. S. Eliot

  Unique, Feelings, Immature

  "Essays on Elizabethan Drama".

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• What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.

  Salman Rushdie

  Art, Imagination, Firsts

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• A great artist... must be shaken by the naked truths that will not be comforted. This divine discontent, this disequilibrium, this state of inner tension is the source of artistic energy.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Artist, Suffering, Energy

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1949). “Truth and Fantasy from My Life”

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• It is frequently the tragedy of the great artist, as it is of the great scientist, that he frightens the ordinary man.

  Loren Eiseley

  Art, Men, Tragedy

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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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