Great Artist Quotes - Page 3

• To try to understand the real significance of what the great artists, the serious masters, tell us in their masterpieces, that leads to God; one man wrote or told it in a book; another, in a picture.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Real, Book, Artist

  Naomi E. Maurer, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin (1998). “The Pursuit of Spiritual Wisdom: The Thought and Art of Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin”, p.15, Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press

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• All the great artists of the world slowly slowly start growing a quality of feminineness, grace, elegance, exquisiteness. A certain flavor of softness, relaxedness, calmness and quietness surrounds them. They are no longer feverish. What I am teaching here is really to turn the whole world feminine.

  Rajneesh

  Teaching, Artist, Grace

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• Jesus must have been a really great artist in creating enemies because he was only thirty-three when he was crucified, and there were only three years of work because he appeared at the age of thirty. Up to that time he was with the mystery schools, going around the world to Egypt, to India, and the possibility is even to Tibet and to Japan.

  Rajneesh

  Jesus, School, Artist

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• Then Martine said: "So yuo will be poor now all your life, Babette?" Poor?" said Babette. She smiled as if to herself. "No, I shall never be poor. I told you that I am a great artist. A great artist, Mesdames, is never poor.We have something, Mesdames, of which other people know nothing.

  Isak Dinesen

  Artist, People, Poor

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• A great artist can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is ... and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be ... more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo see that this lovely young girl is still alive

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Girl, Artist, Lovely

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Stranger in a Strange Land”, p.303, Penguin

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• What the really great artists do is they're entirely themselves. They're entirely themselves. They've got their own vision, they have their own way of fracturing reality, and if it's authentic and true, you will feel it in your nerve endings.

  David Foster Wallace

  Reality, Artist, Vision

  "The Charlie Rose Show", March 27, 1997.

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• But the great artists like Michelangelo and Blake and Tolstoi--like Christ whom Blake called an artist because he had one of the most creative imaginations that ever was on earth--do not want security, egoistic or materialistic. Why, it never occurs to them. "Be not anxious for the morrow," and "which of you being anxious can add one cubit to his stature?" So they dare to be idle, i.e. not to be pressed and duty-driven all the time. They dare to love people even when they are very bad, and they dare not to try and dominate others to show them what they must do for their own good.

  Brenda Ueland

  Peace, Artist, People

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• Bad artists always admire each other's work. They call it being large-minded and free from prejudice. But a truly great artist cannot conceive of life being shown, or beauty fashioned, under any conditions other than those he has selected.

  Oscar Wilde

  Beauty, Art, Prejudice

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.702, GENERAL PRESS

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• My story is really an affirmation of my strength and my luck. To live with a great artist like Ted Hughes or Mick Jagger is a very, very destructive role for a woman trying to be herself. In fact, it can't be done.

  Marianne Faithfull

  Artist, Luck, Trying

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• All really great artists, Jackson Pollack, John Cage, Beckett or Joyce - you are never indifferent to them.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Artist, Cages, Beckett

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• But some great records are are being made with today's technology and there are still great artists among us. Likewise there are artists today who are so reliant on modern technology, they wouldn't have emerged when recording was more organic.

  Tony Visconti

  Artist, Technology, Records

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• Well, in order for me to be successful... In order to be a great artist - musician, actor, painter, whatever - you must be able to be private in public at all times.

  Lady Gaga

  Successful, Artist, Order

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• If sometimes our great artists have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our nation falls short of its highest potential. I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.

  John F. Kennedy

  Country, Fall, Artist

  "Kid Cudi wants you to readjust your mind with inspirational words from JFK" by Nadeska Alexis, www.mtv.com. August 7, 2015.

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• I have never really been a great artist. I have been a human being that has loved art, which is not the same thing. But I have loved and believed in art and the idea of universal brotherhood so much, that I have put everything I have into them, and I have been blessed.

  Josephine Baker

  Art, Blessed, Ideas

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• I guess I am ruthless too because that's what makes a great artist. But I also respect people, I don't go around stepping on their heads.

  Julian Schnabel

  Artist, People, Ruthless

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• The great artist and thinker are the simplifiers.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Artist, Simplicity, Great Art

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• Only the brave should teach....Teaching is a vocation. It is as sacred as priesthood; as innate a desire, as inescapable as the genius which compels a great artist. If he has not the concern for humanity, the love of living creatures, the vision of the priest and the artist, he must not teach.

  Pearl S. Buck

  Teaching, Artist, Brave

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• While one should always study the method of a great artist, one should never imitate his manner. The manner of an artist is essentially individual, the method of an artist is absolutely universal. The first personality, which no one should copy.

  Oscar Wilde

  Artist, Personality, Firsts

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.1689, GENERAL PRESS

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• The camera would miss it all. A magnificent picture is never worth a thousand perfect words. Ansel Adams can be a great artist, but he can never be Shakespeare. His tools are too literal.

  John Dunning

  Artist, Perfect, Missing

  John Dunning (2012). “The Bookman's Wake”, p.188, Simon and Schuster

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• The need to be a great artist makes it hard to be an artist.  The need to produce a great work of art makes it hard to produce any art at all. . .  Fear is what blocks an artist.  The fear of not being good enough.  The fear of not finishing.  The fear of failure and of success.  The fear of beginning at all.

  Julia Cameron

  Art, Block, Finishing

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• A great artist is not one who merely fits into a genre but one who defines the genre.

  Vikas Swarup

  Artist, Fit, Genre

  Vikas Swarup (2008). “Slumdog Millionaire: A Novel”, p.216, Simon and Schuster

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• A great artist is never poor.

  Isak Dinesen

  Artist, Poor

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• In short, [Coltrane's] tone is beautiful because it is functional. In other words, it is always involved in saying something. You can't separate the means that a man uses to say something from what he ultimately says. Technique is not separated from its content in a great artist.

  Cecil Taylor

  Beautiful, Mean, Artist

  "John Coltrane". Book by Bill Cole, 1976.

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• I've never been able to understand where great artists come from.

  Harold Prince

  Artist, Able

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• Cookery is a wholly unselfish art: All good cooks, like all great artists, must have an audience worth cooking for.

  Andre Simon

  Art, Cooking, Unselfish

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