50 Inspiring Quotes Every Artist Should Know

"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

"Every artist was first an amateur."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

- Pablo Picasso

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

- Bob Ross

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

- Pablo Picasso

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

- Pablo Picasso

"All art requires courage."

- Anne Tucker

"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

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

- Vincent van Gogh

"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

"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 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

"Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known."

- Oscar Wilde

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

- Edgar Degas

"I would like to paint the way a bird sings."

- Claude Monet

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

- Albert Einstein

"An artist is someone who produces things that people don’t need to have but that he – for some reason – thinks it would be a good idea to give them."

- Andy Warhol

"I paint myself because I am alone. I paint myself because I am the subject I know best."

- Frida Kahlo

"The world today doesn’t make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?"

- Pablo Picasso

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

- Maya Angelou

"If one really loves nature, one can find beauty everywhere."

- Vincent van Gogh

"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

"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

"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

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

- Paul Cézanne

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

- Michelangelo

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

- Scott Adams

"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

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

- Vincent van Gogh

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

- Vincent van Gogh

"Everything you can imagine is real."

- Pablo Picasso

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

- Henry Ward Beecher

"If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something."

- Kurt Vonnegut

"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

"Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"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

"I dream my paintings, and then they paint my dream."

- Vincent van Gogh

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

- Pablo Picasso

"I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own."

- Jackson Pollock

"Art begins with resistance - at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor."

- Andre Gide

"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

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

- Leonardo da Vinci

"With color one obtains an energy that seems to stem from witchcraft."

- Henri Matisse

"If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him."

- John F. Kennedy

"Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees."

- Marcel Proust

"The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart."

- George Sand

"Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos."

- Stephen Sondheim

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

- Thomas Merton

"The greatness of art is not to find what is common but what is unique."

- Isaac Bashevis Singer

"One eye sees, the other feels."

- Paul Klee

"What is art but a way of seeing?"

- Saul Bellow

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

- Vincent Willem van Gogh

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

- Vincent van Gogh

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

- Pablo Picasso

"You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

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

- Ken Wilber

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

- Kurt Vonnegut

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

- Twyla Tharp

"We, by our arts may be called the grandsons of God."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse."

- Winston Churchill

"When one paints an ideal, one does not need to limit one's imagination."

- Ellen Key

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

- Friedrich Nietzsche

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

- Pablo Picasso

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

- Pablo Picasso

"I don't believe in art. I believe in artists."

- Marcel Duchamp

"An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose."

- Langston Hughes

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

- Vincent van Gogh

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

- Leo Tolstoy

"The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity."

- Walt Whitman

"Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad."

- Salvador Dali

"The artist does not see things as they are, but as he is."

- Alfred Tonnelle

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

- Jean Jacques Rousseau

"To paint is a possessing rather than a picturing."

- Philip Guston

"Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art."

- Leonardo DaVinci

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

- Michelangelo

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

- Salvador Dali

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

- Robert Henri

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

- Alberto Giacometti

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

- Edward Hopper

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

- Berthe Morisot

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

- Edgar Degas

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

- Paul Cezanne

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

- Piet Mondrian

"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

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

- Georgia O'Keeffe

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

- Henry Moore

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

- Paul Cézanne

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

- Salvador Dali

"Every good painter paints what he is."

- Jackson Pollock

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

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

- Michelangelo

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

- Elbert Hubbard

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

- Schumman

"Artists must be men of wit, consciously or unconsciously philosophers; read, study and think a great deal of life…"

- Robert Henri

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

- Georgia O'Keeffe

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

- Marc Chagall

"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

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

- Aristotle

"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

"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

"Art is never finished, only abandoned"

- Leonardo da Vinci

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

- Kurt Vonnegut

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

- Charles Horton Cooley

"You don't take a photograph, you make it."

- Ansel Adams

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

- Vincent van Gogh

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

- Pablo Picasso

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

- Pablo Picasso

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

- James McNeill Whistler

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

- Vincent van Gogh

"Do not fear mistakes - there are none."

- Miles David

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

- Vincent van Gogh

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

- Vincent van Gogh

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

- Paul Cezanne

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

- Marc Chagall

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

- Leonardo da Vinci

"This world is but a canvas to our imagination."

- Henry David Thoreau

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

- Frida Kahlo

"Painting is the passage from the chaos of the emotions to the order of the possible."

- Balthus

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

- Pablo Picasso

"Art is never finished, only abandoned."

- Leonardo da Vinci

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

- Vincent van Gogh

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

- Michelangelo

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

- Wassily Kandinsky

"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

"Great art picks up where nature ends."

- Marc Chagall

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

- Andy Warhol

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

- Paul Valéry

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

- George Bernard Shaw

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

- Andy Warhol

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

- Francis Bacon

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

- Auguste Rodin

"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

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

- Rene Magritte

"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

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

- Lucian Freud

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

- Leonardo da Vinci

"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

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

- Henry Moore

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

- Robert Schumann

"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

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

- Edgar Degas

"I invent nothing, I rediscover."

- Auguste Rodin

"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

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

- Vincent van Gogh

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

- Rembrandt van Rijn

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

- Robert Hughes

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

- Paul Gardner

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

- George Moore

"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

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

- Pierre Auguste Renoir

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

- John W. Gardner

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

- Andre Gide

"Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others."

- Jonathan Swift

"Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still."

- Dorothea Lange

"Rules and models destroy genius and art."

- William Hazlitt

"In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it."

- Ernst Fischer

"Every picture shows a spot with which the artist has fallen in love."

- Alfred Sisley

"I hope to live all my life for my art, without abandoning my principles one iota."

- Gustave Courbet

"An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way."

- Charles Bukowski

"A picture is a poem without words."

- Horace

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

- Michelangelo

"Photography is a major force in explaining man to man."

- Edward Steichen

"It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"The fine art of painting, which is the bastard of alchemy, always has been always will be, a game. The rules of the game are quite simple: in a given arena, on as many psychic fronts as the talent allows, one must visually describe, the centre of the meaning of existence."

- Brett Whiteley

"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.  In the eternal trinity of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, art, while it can be good and true, has always staked out the domain of the Beautiful."

- Ken Wilber

"Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something."

- Rainbow Rowell

"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."

- George Bernard Shaw

"It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done."

- Vincent van Gogh

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science."

- Albert Einstein

"Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep."

- Clive Barker

"I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls."

- Anaïs Nin

"Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you."

- Chuck Klosterman

"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."

- C.S. Lewis

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

- Claude Monet

"A good painting to me has always been like a friend. It keeps me company, comforts and inspires."

- Hedy Lamarr

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

- Vincent van Gogh

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

- Pablo Picasso

"Painting is by nature a luminous language."

- Robert Delaunay

"All art is but imitation of nature."

- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

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

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

"I dream a lot. I do more painting when I’m not painting. It’s in the subconscious.."

- Andrew Wyeth

"When inspiration doesn’t come, I go halfway to meet it."

- Freud

"Man will begin to recover the moment he takes art as seriously as physics, chemistry, or money."

- Ernst Levy

"One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"The only time I am truly in the Now is when I paint."

- Lori McNee

"Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods."

- Iris Murdoch

"You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear thorough the search."

- Rick Riordan

"God and other artists are always a little obscure."

- Oscar Wilde

"Artists are fiery, they do not weep!"

- Ludwig van Beethoven

"Everything depends on the attitude of the artist toward his subject. It is essential."

- Robert Henri

"I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies."

- Le Corbusier

"A great artist can paint a great picture on a small canvas."

- Charles Dudley Warner

"Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together."

- John Ruskin

"Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist-a master-and that is what Auguste Rodin was-can look at an old woman, protray her exactly as she is...and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be...and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart...no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn't matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired-but it does to them."

- Robert Heinlein

"Pictures must not be too picturesque."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Art must take reality by surprise."

- Francoise Sagan

"A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"That stroke you are about to make on a painting is as much you as the next word you utter or the next breath you take."

- Harley Brown

"Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who can’t attain it in anything."

- Eugene Delacroix

"The day is an empty canvas, the shapes and colors are yours to choose."

- Alex Noble

"What art offers is space – a certain breathing room for the spirit."

- John Updike

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

- Bob Ross

"Anyone who says you can’t see a thought simply doesn’t know art."

- Wynetka Ann Reynolds

"...and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?"

- Vincent Willem van Gogh

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

- Oscar Wilde

"Painting is a source of endless pleasure, but also of great anguish."

- Balthus

"Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?"

- John Keats

"No heirloom of humankind captures the past as do art and language."

- Theodore Bikel

"There is nothing new in art except talent."

- Anton Chekhov

"An artist is like a prophet. He must lead people and help them get acquainted with what he sees."

- George Butendorp

"A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"To curb the machine and limit art to handicraft is a denial of opportunity."

- Lewis Mumford

"What i like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce."

- Karl Lagerfeld

"What I didn't know was I was deeply attracted to the big space."

- David Hockney

"Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art."

- Ambrose Bierce

"Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs."

- Thomas Wolfe

"The philistine provides the best definition of art. Anything that makes him rage is first class."

- Louis Dudek

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

- Andy Warhol

"Bad artists always admire each other’s work."

- Oscar Wilde

"If there’s ever a problem, I film it and it’s no longer a problem. It’s a film."

- Andy Warhol

"Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television."

- Woody Allen

"Art, Undeniably, is conductive to happiness."

"If you always do what you always did - you'll always get what you always got."

"All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness."

"A picture is worth a thousand words."