Inspiring Quotes on Art: A Collection to Ignite Your Creativity

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

- Leonardo da Vinci

"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

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

- Salvador Dali

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

- Francis Bacon

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

- Georgia O’Keeffe

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

- Auguste Rodin

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

- Berthe Morisot

"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

"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

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

- Marc Chagall

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

- Paul Cezanne

"Life obliges me to do something, so I paint."

- Rene Magritte

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

- Marc Chagall

"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

"The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web."

- Pablo Picasso

"A Good artist has less time than ideas."

- Martin Kippenberger

"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

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

- Salvador Dali

"The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real."

- Lucian Freud

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

- Wassily Kandinsky

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

- Vincent van Gogh

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

- Michelangelo

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

- Claude Monet

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

- Edvard Munch

"Painting is a means of self-enlightenment."

- John Olsen

"I don't say everything, but I paint everything."

- Pablo Picasso

"The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting."

- Vincent Van Gogh

"The holy grail is to spend less time making the picture than it takes people to look at it."

- Banksy

"There's no retirement for an artist, it's your way of living so there's no end to it."

- Henry Moore

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

- Leonardo da Vinci

"An artist never really finishes his work; he merely abandons it."

- Paul Valéry

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

- Aristotle

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

- Oscar Wilde

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

- Pablo Picasso

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

- Stella Adler

"I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say 'he feels deeply, he feels tenderly.'"

- Vincent Van Gogh

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

- Leonardo da Vinci

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

- Pablo Picasso

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

- Michelangelo

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

- Georges Rouault

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

- Theodore Dreiser

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

- Vincent van Gogh

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

- Scott Adams

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

- Pablo Picasso

"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

"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

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

- Albrecht Durer

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

- Pablo Picasso

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

- Andy Warhol

"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

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

- Vincent Van Gogh

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

- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

- Michelangelo

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

- Robert Henri

"I invent nothing, I rediscover."

- Auguste Rodin

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

- Vincent van Gogh

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

- Henry Ward Beecher

"The chief enemy of creativity is ‘good’ sense."

- Pablo Picasso

"Creativity is magic. Don’t examine it too closely."

- Edward Albee

"Art is not a thing, it is a way."

- Elbert Hubbard

"Color is the place where our brain and the universe meet."

- Paul Klee

"Art is a line around your thoughts."

- Gustav Klimt

"Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist."

- Pablo Picasso

"The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before."

- Neil Gaiman

"We have art in order not to die of life."

- Albert Camus

"Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination."

- Vincent van Gogh

"No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination."

- Edward Hopper

"Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable."

- George Bernard Shaw

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

- Vincent van Gogh

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

- James McNeill Whistler

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up."

- Pablo Picasso

"Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth."

- Pablo Picasso

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

- Thomas Merton

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

- Pablo Picasso

"A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art."

- Paul Cézanne

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

- Edgar Degas

"The purpose of art is to make the invisible visible."

- Paul Klee

"Every act of creation is, first of all, an act of destruction."

- Pablo Picasso

"The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity."

- Alberto Giacometti

"Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable."

- Cesar Cruz

"The artist sees what others only catch a glimpse of."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced."

- Leo Tolstoy

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

- Piet Mondrian

"Art is the journey of a free soul."

- Alev Oguz

"Art is not a pastime but a priesthood."

- Jean Cocteau

"Art completes what nature cannot bring to finish."

- Aristotle

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

- Henry Moore

"Every good painter paints what he is."

- Jackson Pollock

"Life is pain, art is redemption."

- Brian Lee Jones

"Art is an effort to make you walk a half an inch above ground."

- Yoko Ono

"Art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind."

- Louise Nevelson

"Art is often born from inner struggle. Artists are often plagued by impulses they must express. Contentment does not seek action but struggle always seeks release."

- Eric Gibbons

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

- Frida Kahlo

"The goal of life is rapture. Art is the way we experience it. Art is the transforming experience."

- Joseph Campbell

"Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it."

- Berthold Brecht

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

- Henry Ward Beecher

"To create one’s own world in any of the arts takes courage."

- Georgia O’Keeffe

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

- Twyla Tharp

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

- Charles Horton Cooley

"Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible."

- Paul Klee

"The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web."

- Pablo Picasso

"Creativity takes courage."

- Henri Matisse

"Every artist was first an amateur."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Art is the highest form of hope."

- Gerhard Richter

"The painter has the universe in his mind and hands."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"Art is the language of the soul."

- Claudia Moscovici

"Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist."

- Edward Hopper

"Art is never finished, only abandoned."

- Leonardo da Vinci

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

- Edgar Degas

"The purpose of truly transcendent art is to express something you are not yet, but that you can become."

- Ken Wilber

"All great transcendental art is not merely symbolic or imaginary: it is a direct invitation to recognize and realize a deeper dimension of our very own being."

- Ken Wilber

"Beginning with audacity is a very great part of the art of painting."

- Winston Churchill

"The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been concealed by the answers."

- James Baldwin

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

- Scott Adams

"The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Have no fear of perfection; you'll never reach it."

- Salvador Dali

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

- Rembrandt van Rijn

"We have art in order not to die of the truth."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Art-making has an alchemical effect on the imagination. It awakens the senses and sharpens insights, teaching us to think in symbols, metaphors, and to de-code complexity, so we can perceive the world in new ways."

- Linda Naiman

"The primary benefit of practising any art, whether well or badly, is that it enables one’s soul to grow."

- Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

"Art is magical, but it’s not magic. It’s a neurological product, and we can study this neurological product the same way we study other complex processes such as language."

- Charles Limb

"Art has two constant, two unending concerns: It always meditates on death and thus always creates life."

- Boris Pasternak

"The artist has one function–to affirm and glorify life."

- W. Edward Brown

"Art is meant to disturb, science reassures."

- Georges Braque

"The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection."

- Michelangelo

"All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril."

- Oscar Wilde

"Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art."

- Andy Warhol

"If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."

- William Blake

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

- Robert Schumann