Timeless Inspiration: A Curated Collection of Inspirational Quote Art

"I dream of painting and then I paint my dream."

- Vincent Van Gogh

"Every child is an artist; the problem is staying an artist when you grow up"

- Pablo Picasso

"Inspiration does exist but it must find you working."

- Pablo Picasso

"You can’t use up creativity. The more the you use, the more you have."

- Maya Angelou

"The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live only as you can."

- Neil Gaiman

"Art is not what you see, but what you make others see."

- Edgar Degas

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."

- Scott Adams

"If you hear a voice within you say, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced"

- Vincent Van Gogh

"Creativity is contagious, pass it on."

- Albert Einstein

"Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. We come from the Creator with creativity. I think that each one of us is born with creativity."

- Maya Angelou

"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last, you create what you will."

- George Bernard Shaw

"Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that’s easy. What’s hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity."

- Charles Mingus

"Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things."

- Ray Bradbury

"Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while."

- Steve Jobs

"You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not’?"

- George Bernard Shaw

"Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity, because if you’re passionate about something, then you’re more willing to take risks."

- Yo-Yo Ma

"Creative work is a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got."

- Steven Pressfield

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

- Thomas Merton

"To practice any art, no matter how well or how badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. So do it."

- Kurt Vonnegut

"I am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all my heart."

- Vincent van Gogh

"To create one’s own world takes courage."

- Georgia O’Keeffe

"In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

- Georgia O’Keeffe

"Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all."

- Michelangelo

"Creativity takes courage."

- Henri Matisse

"Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art."

- Andy Warhol

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

- Pablo Picasso

"I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for."

- Georgia O’Keeffe

"An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one."

- Charles Horton Cooley

"One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"Painting is just another way of keeping a diary."

- Pablo Picasso

"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together."

- Vincent van Gogh

"The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech."

- Vincent van Gogh

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."

- Henry David Thoreau

"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."

- Dr. Seuss

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

- Pablo Picasso

"To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it."

- Kurt Vonnegut

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."

- Pablo Picasso

"If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud."

- Émile Zola

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

- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"As practice makes perfect, I cannot but make progress; each drawing one makes, each study one paints, is a step forward."

- Vincent van Gogh

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

- Robert Henri

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

- Marc Chagall

"Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye, it also includes the inner pictures of the soul."

- Edvard Munch

"There is no must in art because art is free."

- Wassily Kandinsky

"Do not fear mistakes - there are none."

- Miles David

"The artist's world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep."

- Paul Strand

"If I were called upon to define briefly the word Art, I should call it the reproduction of what the senses perceive in nature, seen through the veil of the soul."

- Paul Cezanne

"There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people."

- Vincent Van Gogh

"What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough."

- Eugene Delacroix

"I would rather die of passion than of boredom."

- Vincent van Gogh

"There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun."

- Pablo Picasso

"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

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

- Stella Adler

"Don’t be an art critic, but paint, there lies salvation."

- Paul Cézanne

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

- Oscar Wilde

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

- Aristotle

"Art is never finished, only abandoned"

- Leonardo Da Vinci

"If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing."

- Marc Chagall

"Life is the art of drawing without an eraser."

- John W. Gardner

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

- Twyla Tharp

"Art is a lie that makes us realize truth."

- Pablo Picasso

"Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it."

- Andy Warhol

"Painting is a means of self-enlightenment."

- John Olsen

"I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality."

- Frida Kahlo

"We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents."

- Bob Ross

"Every artist was first an amateur."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures."

- Henry Ward Beecher

"Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous."

- Bill Moyers

"Creativity is a natural extension of our enthusiasm."

- Earl Nightingale

"Every good painter paints what he is."

- Jackson Pollock

"In art, what we want is the certainty that one spark of original genius shall not be extinguished."

- Mary Cassatt

"It is important to express oneself…provided the feelings are real and are taken from you own experience."

- Berthe Morisot

"To be an artist is to believe in life."

- Henry Moore

"Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it."

- Salvador Dalí

"You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club."

- Jack London

"If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint."

- Edward Hopper

"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."

- Andy Warhol

"Great art picks up where nature ends."

- Marc Chagall

"Creativity is a drug I cannot live without."

- Cecil B. DeMille

"A work of art which isn’t based on feeling isn’t art at all."

- Paul Cézanne

"The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live."

- Auguste Rodin

"Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do."

- Edgar Degas

"I think of art as the highest level of creativity. To me, it is one of the greatest sources of enjoyment."

- David Rockefeller

"Originality is nothing but judicious imitation."

- Voltaire

"It is wise to learn; it is God-like to create."

- John Saxe

"The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel."

- Piet Mondrian

"The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery."

- Francis Bacon

"Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing."

- Salvador Dali

"Life is art. Art is life. I never separate it."

- Ai Weiwei

"Creativity comes from a conflict of ideas."

- Donatella Versace

"I invent nothing, I rediscover."

- Auguste Rodin

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

- Andre Gide

"A good artist has less time than ideas."

- Martin Kippenberger

"I paint for myself. I don’t know how to do anything else, anyway. Also, I have to earn my living, and occupy myself."

- Francis Bacon

"A painting is never finished - it simply stops in interesting places."

- Paul Gardner

"A man paints with his brains and not with his hands."

- Michelangelo

"You come to nature with all her theories, and she knocks them all flat."

- Pierre Auguste Renoir

"Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment."

- Claude Monet

"Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision."

- James McNeill Whistler

"To send light into the darkness of men’s hearts – such is the duty of the artist."

- Schumman

"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free"

- Michelangelo

"I wish they would only take me as I am."

- Vincent Van Gogh

"In our time there are many artists who do something because it is new; they see their value and their justification in this newness. They are deceiving themselves; novelty is seldom the essential. This has to do with one thing only; making a subject better from its intrinsic nature."

- Henri de Toulouse Lautrec

"A great artist is always before his time or behind it."

- George Moore

"The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize."

- Robert Hughes

"Love always brings difficulties, that is true, but the good side of it is that it gives energy."

- Vincent Van Gogh

"Art is the stored honey of the human soul."

- Theodore Dreiser

"I hold that the perfection of form and beauty is contained in the sum of all men."

- Albrecht Dürer

"If a man devotes himself to art, much evil is avoided that happens otherwise if one is idle."

- Albrecht Durer

"For me, painting is a way to forget life. It is a cry in the night, a strangled laugh."

- Georges Rouault

"Painting is the grandchild of nature. It is related to God."

- Rembrandt van Rijn

"Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do."

- Edgar Degas

"It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing."

- Mark Rothko