Quotes by Painters

Exactitude is not truth.
Henri Matisse
All art is erotic.
Gustav Klimt
I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to know better.
Frida Kahlo
There is but one Paris and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even—the French air clears up the brain and does good—a world of good.
Vincent van Gogh
While working in California, I met William Valentiner and Edgar Richardson of the Detroit Institute of Arts. I mentioned a desire which I had to paint a series of murals about the industries of the United States, a series that would constitute a new kind of plastic poem, depicting in color and form the story of each industry and its division of labor. Dr. Valentiner was keenly interested, considering my idea a potential base for a new school of modern art in America, as related to the social structure of American life as the art of the Middle Ages had been related to medieval society.
Diego Rivera
The industrial part of Detroit is really the most interesting side, otherwise it’s like the rest of the United States, ugly and stupid.
Frida Kahlo
To write a genuine familiar or truly English style, is to write as any one would speak in common conversation who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes.
William Hazlitt
People who have monsters recognize each other. They know each other without even saying a word.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
One of my roommates, Rafael, he's an expert on monsters. Not that he talks about them. I can just tell. People who have monsters recognize each other. They know each other without even saying a word.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
When we feel fractured, redundant and nonessential, only bouncing back from lowliness may brighten up the story of our life. In this endeavor, “otherness” might lend a helping hand in making the road less parching. (“He did not know that she knew”)
Erik Pevernagie
If we expect to “know” the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, we may have a hard time seeing the whole picture, since the truth is a willful construction that allows us often merely to “guess”. ("Hinter der Mattscheibe")
Erik Pevernagie
What is the purpose of a city if not to grant the greatest of gifts, anonymity?
Rabih Alameddine
It takes a long time to become young.
Pablo Picasso
I struggled in the beginning. I said I was going to write the truth so help me God. And I thought I was. I found I couldn't. Nobody can write the absolute truth.
Henry Miller
What is there to be afraid of? The worst thing that can happen is you fail. So what? I failed at a lot of things. My first record was horrible.
John Mellencamp
Tools were made and born were hands Every farmer understands.
William Blake
It's as interesting and as difficult to say a thing well as to paint it. There is the art of lines and colours but the art of words exists too and will never be less important.
Vincent van Gogh
Wit is the salt of conversation not the food.
William Hazlitt
The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.
William Blake
I have mental joys and mental health Mental friends and mental wealth I've a wife that I love and that loves me I've all but riches bodily.
William Blake
How lovely are the portals of the night When stars come out to watch the daylight die.
Thomas Cole
A truth that's told with bad intent Beats all the lies you can invent.
William Blake
One truth discovered one pang of regret at not being able to express it is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world.
William Hazlitt
Truth exists. Only lies are invented.
Georges Braque
Trifles make perfection - and perfection is no trifle.
Michelangelo
Great things are not done by impulse but by a series of small things brought together.
Vincent van Gogh
Horus non numero nisi serenas (I count only the sunny hours).
William Hazlitt
Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.
William Hazlitt
One thought fills immensity.
William Blake
The best part of our lives we pass in counting on what is to come.
William Hazlitt
I look back on my life like a good day's work it is done and I am satisfied with it.
Grandma Moses
Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest.
Georgia O'Keeffe
Of course he seems to have quite a mind of his own and that is probably where he is weakest.
Arnold Schoenberg
The country has charms only for those not obliged to stay there.
Edouard Manet
There is nothing good to be had in the country or if there be they will not let you have it.
William Hazlitt
The Old and New Testaments are the Great Code of Art.
William Blake
Taste is the enemy of creativeness.
Pablo Picasso
If a person has no delicacy he has you in his power.
William Hazlitt
All outward success when it has value is but the inevitable result of an inward success of full living full play and enjoyment of one's faculties.
Robert Henri
My mother said to me "If you become a soldier you'll be a general if you become a monk you'll end up as the pope." Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.
Pablo Picasso
A strong passion for any object will ensure success for the desire of the end will point out the means.
William Hazlitt
Enthusiasm for one's goal lessens the disagreeableness of working toward it.
Thomas Eakins
A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death. It not only gives us fortitude to bear pain but teaches us at every step the precarious tenure on which we hold our present being.
William Hazlitt
If there comes a little thaw Still the air is chill and raw Here and there a patch of snow Dirtier than the ground below Dribbles down a marshy flood Ankle-deep you stick in mud In the meadows while you sing "This is Spring."
C. P. Cranch
Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps.
William Blake
Simplicity of character is the natural result of profound thought.
William Hazlitt
The boy and girl going hand in hand through a meadow the mother washing her baby the sweet simple things in life. We have almost lost track of them. On the one side we overintel-lectualize everything on the other hand we are over-mechanized. We can understand the danger of the atomic bomb but the danger of our misunderstanding the meaning of life is much more serious.
Edward Steichen
Simplicity is an exact medium between too little and too much.
Sir Joshua Reynolds
The most silent people are generally those who think most highly of themselves.
William Hazlitt
Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight are unimportant.
Henry Miller
We create our fate every day ... most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.
Henry Miller
No bird soars too high if he soars on his own wings.
William Blake
Faith in oneself ... is the best and safest course.
Michelangelo
As is our confidence so is our capacity.
William Hazlitt
Let a man's talents or virtues be what they may he will only feel satisfaction in his society as he is satisfied in himself.
William Hazlitt
Those people who are uncomfortable in themselves are disagreeable to others.
William Hazlitt
Let a man's talents or virtues be what they may he will only feel satisfaction as he is satisfied in himself.
William Hazlitt
I refuse to try to explain everything because if you know too much about yourself you become impotent. Better not to know what it is that makes you tick.
Paul Wunderlich
to be nobody but yourself- in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
E.E. Cummings
I don't think anyone is free - one creates one's own prison.
Graham Sutherland