The Quotes canon
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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Oscar Wilde2 quotes
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist. — Oscar Wilde · 1891The true artist is a man who believes absolutely in himself, because he is absolutely himself. — Oscar Wilde · 1891Akira Kurosawa1 quote
To be an artist means never to avert one's eyes. — Akira KurosawaAndy Warhol1 quote
An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have but that he—for some reason—thinks it would be a good idea to give them. — Andy Warhol · 1975Anton Ego1 quote
Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. — Anton Ego · 2007Gustave Flaubert1 quote
The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him. — Gustave Flaubert · 1857H.L. Mencken1 quote
The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. — H.L. Mencken · 1919John Updike1 quote
The artist brings something into the world that didn't exist before, and... He does it without destroying something else. — John Updike · 1977Joseph Conrad1 quote
But the artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom: to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition—and, therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives: to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain. — Joseph Conrad · 1897Pablo Picasso1 quote
The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web. — Pablo Picasso · 1935Paul Gauguin1 quote
In art, there are only two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists. — Paul Gauguin · 1895Ralph Waldo Emerson1 quote
Every artist was first an amateur. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1867Vitruvius1 quote
Neither natural ability without instruction, nor instruction without natural ability, can make the perfect artist. — Vitruvius · 70 BCW.H. Auden1 quote
Though the great artists of the past could not change the course of history, it is only through their work that we are able to break bread with the dead, and without communion with the dead a fully human life is impossible. — W.H. Auden · 1967