Inspirational Artist Quotes

• Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Sweet, Art, Writing

  Fran Lebowitz (2011). “The Fran Lebowitz Reader”, p.23, Vintage

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• A Good artist has less time than ideas.

  Martin Kippenberger

  Art, Ideas, Artist

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• The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

  T. S. Eliot

  Art, Sacrifice, Self

  The Sacred Wood "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1920)

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• Every artist was first an amateur.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Motivational, Inspiring

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VIII: Letters and Social Aims”, p.119, Harvard University Press

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• The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.

  Robert Henri

  Inspiring, Art, Creativity

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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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• Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing.

  Marc Chagall

  Life, Beauty, Beautiful

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• The greater the artist, the greater the doubt.

  Robert Hughes

  Artist, Doubt, Inspirational Art

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• The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.

  Pablo Picasso

  Art, Dust, Soul

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• To create one's world in any of the arts takes courage.

  Georgia O'Keeffe

  Inspirational, Courage, Art

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• 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

  Art, Nature, Reality

  Vincent van Gogh, Mark Roskill (1997). “The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh”, p.156, Simon and Schuster

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• The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means.

  William Faulkner

  Art, Philosophy, Mean

  George G. Stewart, Robert W. Hamblin, William Faulkner (2009). “Yoknapatawpha, images and voices: a photographic study of Faulkner's County, with passages from classic William Faulkner texts”, Univ of South Carolina Pr

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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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• The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.

  William Faulkner

  Life, Art, Moving

  1956 Interview in Paris Review, Spring.

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• I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.

  Pablo Picasso

  Art, Carpe Diem, Thinking

  In John Golding Cubism (1959) p. 60

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• Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.

  Pablo Picasso

  Art, Truth, Lying

  The Arts, May 1923

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• Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Art, Self, Secret

  "Les Amis du Cinéma" by Alfred North Whitehead, (Paris, October 1, 1952); as quotes in "Telling It Like It Is" by Paul Bowden, (p. 182), 2011.

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• Novelty is seldom the essential... make a subject better from its intrinsic nature.

  Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

  Fashion, Artist, Essentials

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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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• Art is not about thinking something up. It is the opposite - getting something down.

  Julia Cameron

  Life, Beautiful, Art

  FaceBook post by Julia Cameron from Jun 13, 2012

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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 am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living.

  Robert Henri

  Art, Mean, Bad Ass

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• Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.

  Georgia O'Keeffe

  Life, Beautiful, Art

  Roxana Robinson, Georgia O'Keeffe (1989). “Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life”, p.256, UPNE

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• Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Beauty, Beautiful, Art

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• The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Art, Philosophical, Reality

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