Art Quotes

“When I am finishing a picture, I hold some God-made object up to it - a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand - as a final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there's a clash between the two, it's bad art.”

-- Marc Chagall

“The idea is, if I can't heal from my art, then how can you heal?”

-- Maynard James Keenan

“The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure very much.”

-- William Hazlitt

“Once you take yourself too seriously the art will suffer.”

-- Maynard James Keenan

“The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists.”

-- E. M. Forster

“Every time a student walks past a really urgent, expressive piece of architecture that belongs to his college, it can help reassure him that he does have that mind, does have that soul.”

-- Louis Kahn

“Really I don't like human nature unless all candied over with art.”

-- Virginia Woolf

“The excellency of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeable evaporate.”

-- John Keats

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.”

-- C. S. Lewis

“Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.”

-- Publilius Syrus