“Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.”
Plutarch
PaintingPoetry
Art Quotes
200 FAMOUS QUOTES · ART
Art Quotes
Read 200 of the best art quotes on creativity, painting, beauty and imagination from Leonardo da Vinci, Van Gogh, Oscar Wilde, Rodin and more.
“A work of art is a corner of creation seen through a temperament.”
Émile Zola
PerceptionPersonality
“Art is either plagiarism or revolution.”
Paul Gauguin
OriginalityRevolution
“At a hundred and ten, every dot and every line will be alive.”
Katsushika Hokusai
MasteryAge
“Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings.”
Wassily Kandinsky
ColourSoul
“Every work of art is the child of its age.”
Wassily Kandinsky
HistoryCulture
“Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art.”
Leonardo da Vinci
SpiritCraftsmanship
“A good painter is to paint two main things, namely, man and the intention of his soul.”
Leonardo da Vinci
PaintingSoul
“The more the marble wastes, the more the statue grows.”
Michelangelo
SculptureProcess
“If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all.”
Michelangelo
Hard WorkMastery
“I put my heart and my soul into my work, and I have lost my mind in the process.”
Vincent van Gogh
PassionDedication
“What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”
Vincent van Gogh
CourageLife
“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.”
Vincent van Gogh
PatienceProgress
“In the eyes of the artist, all is beautiful, since his penetrating glance sees the inner truth.”
Auguste Rodin
BeautyTruth
“Patience is also a form of action.”
Auguste Rodin
PatienceAction
“Art happens - no hovel is safe from it, no Prince may depend upon it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about.”
James McNeill Whistler
InspirationMystery
“Industry in Art is a necessity - not a virtue.”
James McNeill Whistler
Hard WorkDiscipline
“No two days are alike, nor even two hours; neither were there ever two leaves of a tree alike since the creation of the world.”
John Constable
NatureObservation
“Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius.”
Joshua Reynolds
GeniusRules
“The mind is but a barren soil; a soil which is soon exhausted, and will produce no crop, unless it be continually fertilized and enriched with foreign matter.”
Joshua Reynolds
LearningInspiration
“Exuberance is Beauty.”
William Blake
BeautyEnergy
“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”
William Blake
WisdomExperience
“Where any view of Money exists Art cannot be carried on.”
William Blake
MoneyIntegrity
“Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality.”
John Ruskin
WorkLife
“No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.”
Oscar Wilde
PerceptionImagination