A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“An artist sees things not as they are, but as he is.”
“An artist should always bite the hand that feeds him - but not too hard.”
“An artist should be as impartial as God.”
“An artist should be taking risks. That's the whole idea of being an artist.”
“An artist should be well read in the best books, and thoroughly high bred, both in heart and bearing. In a word, he should be fit for the best society, and should keef out of it.”
“An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them.”
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray: An Annotated, Uncensored Edition
“An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts
“An artist should have more than two eyes.”
“An artist should know art history. Shock value only lasts so long.”
“An artist should let his style evolve naturally, spontaneously.”
“An artist should make concessions to the listener. That is why Bruckner dedicated one of his symphonies to the Good Lord.”
Source: Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms
“An artist should not fall in love with another artist.”
“An artist should remain true. Otherwise his talent, like his stomach, grows fat and stuffy.”
“An artist should use freely whatever materials he pleases.”
“An artist should write for himself & not for an audience. If the audience likes it, great. If not, they can keep away.”
“An artist that makes art merely to meet a demand is a slave to what his patrons wants to see, or, hear.”
“An artist usually has no friends except other artists, and usually they do not like his work.”
Source: Aperçus: The Aphorisms of Mignon McLaughlin
“An artist wears his work in place of wounds.”
“An artist who brings to his work a mind tolerably furnished with the general principles of art, and a taste formed upon the works of good artists in short, who knows in what excellence consists - will, with the assistance of models... be an overmatch for the greatest painter that ever lived who should be debarred such advantages.”
Source: Discourses on Painting and the Fine Arts, delivered at the Royal Academy. With a portrait
“An artist who dedicates his life to art, burdens his art with his life, and his life with his art.”
Source: Art-as-art: The Selected Writings of Ad Reinhardt
“An artist who doesn't spend a lot of time with himself can never be a great artist!”
“An artist who doesn't have any audience is not an artist.”
“An artist who has no faith is like a painter who was born blind.”
“An artist who has something to say: about reality and dream, about the abysses of emotion and desire, about the dark recesses of the mind; one who is able to tell stories emotionally and intellectually.”
Source: David Lynch: The Factory Photographs
“An artist who is driven by money is no longer driven by art”
“An artist who is inspired is being obvious. He’s not making any decisions, he’s not weighing one idea against another. He’s accepting his first thoughts.”
Source: Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre
“An artist who is self-taught is taught by a very ignorant person indeed.”
“An artist who is too self-centered is liable to exhibit faults he abhors: carelessness, callousness, and even downright cruelty.”
Source: Affirmations for Artists
“An artist who lacks the power of self-criticism accomplishes but little. It is good if your work stands higher than your own opinion of it; bad if it is on the same level. But it is a great disaster if your work stands lower than your judgment of it.”
“An artist who makes pictures that look good but express nothing is like a writer whose words sound good but have no meaning.”
“An artist who opposes himself still has the best chances to reach some result.”
“An artist who theorizes about his work is no longer artist but critic.”
“An artist who works from impulse creates pathways for his body and emotion; the lines will naturally ride on waves of his or her emotion or sometimes get drowned in it”
“An artist who works with his hands, his head and his heart at the same time creates a masterpiece.”
Source: Wealth of Words
“An artist will betray himself by some sort of sincerity.”
“An artist without ideas is a mendicant; barren, he goes begging among the hours.”
Source: Irving Stone, three complete novels
“An artist without obsession isn't worth a damn!”
“An artist works through exposed wounds.”
“An artist worthy of the name should express all the truth of nature, not only the exterior truth, but also, and above all, the inner truth.”
Source: Rodin on Art and Artists
“An artist would not rise above the mediocrity if he condemns it.”
“An artist's career always begins tomorrow”
“An artist's career doesn't happen in the cycle of one week of news. An artist's career happens in a lifetime, and if you're a true artist you're willing to die for what you believe in.”
“An artist's concern is to capture beauty wherever he finds it.”
Source: An Artist of the Floating World
“An artist's duty is rather to stay open-minded and in a state where he can receive information and inspiration. You always have to be ready for that little artistic Epiphany.”
“An artist's early work is inevitably made up of a mixture of tendencies and interests, some of which are compatible and some of which are in conflict”
Source: Mondrian: nature to abstraction : from the Gemeentemuseum, the Hague
“An artist's failures are as valuable as his successes: by misjudging one thing he conforms something else, even if at the time he does not know what that something else is.”
“An artist's fine goal is to manifest a well-nigh heroic self-discipline, carefully attending to all that concerns him.”
Source: Affirmations for Artists
“An artist's flair is sometimes worth a scientist's brains.”
“An artist's job is simply to take the mirror in front of your face and hold it there. It's not to give you any answers. It is simply to take that mirror and point it at you.”
“An artist's job is to articulate what might otherwise be incoherent.”