Quotes about art
621 quotes from 285 people
Edgar Degas1834–1917Quote of Degas in conversation with George Moore, later quoted by Moore in Impressions and Opinions (1891)- Edgar Degas1834–1917As quoted in Ambroise Vollard, Degas: An Intimate Portrait (1927), p. 56
Gertrude Stein1874–1946Geography and Plays (1922), “Sacred Emily”
Leonardo da Vinci1452–1519IX The Practice of Painting
George Sand1804–1876François le Champi, Introduction (1848); Jane Minot Sedgwick (trans.) François the Waif {New York: H. M. Caldwell, 1894) p. 17Money is everywhere but so is poetry. What we lack are the poets.
Federico Fellini1920–1993I’m a Born Liar (2003), “Poets”True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.
Edith Wharton1862–1937The Writing of Fiction (1925), ch. IThe central idea of poetry is the idea of guessing right, like a child.
G. K. Chesterton1874–1936The Victorian Age in Literature (1913), Ch I: The Victorian Compromise and Its Enemies (p. 24)It would have been better if you had died and Gershwin had written the elegy.
Oscar Levant1906–1972On a friend’s elegy for Gershwin; recounted in The Memoirs of an Amnesiac (1965)The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it.
J. D. Salinger1919–2010Seymour: An Introduction (1959)The person who wants nothing, hopes for nothing, and fears nothing can never be an artist.
Anton Chekhov1860–1904Letter to A.S. Suvorin (November 25, 1892)They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.
Frida Kahlo1907–1954As quoted in “Mexican Autobiography”, Time (27 April 1953)For the purposes of poetry a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility.
Aristotle384–322 BCPoetics, 1461b.11
Pete Seeger1919–2014How Can I Keep from Singing: Pete Seeger (1981), p. 95
Carl Sandburg1878–1967“Jazz Fantasia” (1920)