Creative Quotes ~ 1,000+ Words

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what are a thousand words of wisdom worth? Following are a few of my favorite quotes about art, artists and beauty – words for consideration and contemplation.

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“A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness.”

~ John Keats ~

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“A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.”

~ Gertrude Stein ~

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“An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.”

~ James McNeill Whistler ~

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“An artist really isn’t one unless he is willing to risk the artwork in the process of discovery.”

~ A.D. Cook ~

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“Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed.”

~ William Blake ~

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“Art doesn’t transform.

It just plain forms.”

~ Roy Lichtenstein ~

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“Art has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that gives value to survival.”

~ C.S. Lewis ~

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“Art has to move you and design does not. unless it’s a good design for a bus.”

~ David Hockney ~

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

~ Andre Gide ~

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“Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.”

~ John Ruskin ~

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“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.”

~ Edgar Degas ~

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“Art washes from the soul the dust of every day life.”

~ Pablo Picasso ~

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“Artists don’t make objects. Artists make mythologies.”

~ Anish Kapoor ~

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“Beauty doesn’t need ornaments.

Softness can’t bear the weight of ornaments.”

~ Munshi Premchand ~

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“Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in the mirror.”

~ Khalil Gibrain ~

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“Beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

~ John Keats ~

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“Beauty saves. Beauty heals.

Beauty motivates. Beauty unites.

Beauty returns us to our origins, and here lies the ultimate act of saving, of healing, of overcoming duelism.”

~ Matthew Fox ~

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“Confidence, like art, never comes from having all the answers; it comes from being open to all the questions.”

~ Earl Gray Stevens ~

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“Dear God! How beauty varies in nature and art.

In a woman the flesh must be like marble; in a statue the marble must be like flesh.”

~ Victor Hugo ~

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“Genius is patience.”

~ Michelangelo ~

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“Heat cannot be separated from fire, or beauty from the eternal.”

~ Dante Alighieri ~

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“He who works with his hands is a laborer, he who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman, he who works with his hands, his head and his heart is an artist.”

~ Louis Nizer ~

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“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”

~ Pablo Picasso ~

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“I saw the angel in the marble and I just chiseled till I set him free.”

~ Michelangelo ~

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“If art is to flourish in the twenty-first century, it must renew its moral authority by rededicating itself to life.

It must be an enriching, ennobling and vital partner in the public pursuit of civilization.

It should be a majestic presence in everyday life just as it was in the past.”

~ Frederick Hart ~

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“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

~ Albert Einstein ~

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“Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.”

~ Pablo Picasso ~

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“I’ve always wanted to create drama in my pictures, which is why I paint people.

It’s people who have brought drama to pictures from the beginning.

The simplest human gestures tell stories.”

~ Lucian Freud ~

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“Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff.

Most fails. Some works.

You do more of what works.

If it works big, others quickly copy it.

Then you do something else.

The trick is to do something else.”

~ Leonardo da Vinci ~

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“Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.”

~ Michelangelo ~

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“Love of beauty is taste.

The creation of beauty is art.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

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“Make no small plans for they have not the power to stir men’s blood.”

~ Niccolo Machiavelli ~

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“Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.”

~ Robert Bresson ~

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“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creative.”

~ Charles Mingus ~

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“Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.”

~ John Ciardi ~

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“Of life’s two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first a loving heart and the second in a laborer’s hand.”

~ Khalil Gibran ~

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“People with small minds talk about other people.

People with average minds talk about events.

People with great minds talk about ideas.”

~ Anonymous ~

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“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

~ Leonardo da Vinci ~

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“Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.”

~ Pablo Picasso ~

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“The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.”

~ Friedrich Nietzsche ~

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“The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes.

If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it.

Your life will be impoverished.

But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.”

~ Frank Lloyd Wright ~

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“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.

It is the source of all art and science.”

~ Albert Einstein ~

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“The most pathetic error of an art critic is not that he is wrong or that he fails to understand, but that he understands a work of art for which he has no true feeling.”

~ Ramon Gaya ~

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“The naked women’s body is a portion of eternity too great for the eye of man.”

~ William Blake ~

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“The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke.”

~ Jerzy Kosinski ~

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“The proper function of man is to live, not to exist.

I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”

~ Jack London ~

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“The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.”

~ Albert Einstein ~

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“The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: a human creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive.

To them… a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death.

Add to this cruelly delicate organism the the overwhelming necessity to create, create, create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, their breath is cut off…

They must create, must pour out creation.

By some strange, unknown, inward urgency they are not really alive unless they are creating”

~ Pearl S. Buck ~

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“To love beauty is to see light.”

~ Victor Hugo ~

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“To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.”

~ E.M. Forster ~

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“True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.”

~ Albert Einstein ~

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

~ Friedrich Wilhelm Neitzche ~

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“We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.”

~ John F. Kennedy ~

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“We see things not as they are, but as we are.”

~ H.M. Tomlinson ~

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“What we love we shall grow to resemble.”

~ Bernard of Clairvaux ~

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“When I think of art I think of beauty.

Beauty is the mystery of life.

It is not in the eye – it is in the mind.

In our minds there is an awareness of perfection.”

~ Agnes Martin ~

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“When I work, and in my art, I hold hands with God.”

~ Robert Maplethorpe ~

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“Who aims at excellence will be above mediocrity: who aims at mediocrity will be far short of it.”

~ Burmese saying ~

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