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Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,808 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

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Art

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• “In this painting of our life given to us by our memories, everything is moving and depends on our point of view.”

  Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) said by 1824 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The portability of the book, like that of the easel-painting, added much to the new culture of individualism. (p. 233)”

  Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The media themselves are the avant-garde of our society. Avant-garde no longer exists in painting, music and poetry, it's the media themselves.”

  Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn’t make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting — the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.”

  Saul Bellow (1915–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Collect impressions. Don’t be in a hurry to write them down. Because that’s something music can do better than painting: it can centralise variations of colour and light within a single picture — a truth generally ignored, obvious as it is.”

  Claude Debussy (1862–1918) first seen 1906 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Debussy in a letter to his pupil Raoul Bardac (1906)

  Also quoted by: Κλωντ Ντεμπυσσύ (el)

• “Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.”

  Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Address to the Harvard Alumni Association to the Class of '61, in Speeches (1913), p. 96.

• “… I don't expect everyone to get something deep out of it. Some people can just listen to the music, or get their aggressions out, but I think with any great painting or movie, album or whatever it is, it's better if people can take what they need from it. That they're not forced to get some particular message.”

  Marilyn Manson (born 1969) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: As quoted in "Headbanger's Ball" (10 December 1996), MTV Europe.

• “Well, I'm a painter, I was trained as a painter…I seem to have spent a little less time painting than I might've done…But it didn't transcend the feeling of playing at UFO and those sort of places with the lights and that, the fact that the group was getting bigger and bigger.”

  Syd Barrett (1946–2006) first seen 1971 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Melody Maker, March 1971

• “These collages were static symmetrical constructions, portico's with pathetic vegetation, the gateway to the realm of dreams. They were done with colored paper in black, orange or blue dye plates. Although cubist painting interested me very much, not a trace of their influence was to be found in my collages.”

  Jean Arp (1886–1966) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 420 - quote on his early collages, Hans Arp made ca. 1914.

• “I feel frustrated sometimes. I feel bitterness, but I’m not embittered. Feelings pass. A lot of the humor in the music is missed. They insist on painting me as this tragic . . . well not even a tragic, because in this town people don’t understand tragedy. All they understand is drama. You have to be moral to understand tragedy [laughs].”

  Joni Mitchell (born 1943) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Any time I make a record it's followed by a painting period. It's good crop rotation.”

  Joni Mitchell (born 1943) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “All of them perceived that American Democracy did not imply any equality of wealth, but did demand a wholesome sameness of thought, dress, painting, morals, and vocabulary. ~ Ch. 34”

  Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) said by 1951 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The preservation of freedom is the protective reason for limiting and decentralizing governmental power. But there is also a constructive reason. The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government. … Government can never duplicate the variety and diversity of individual action.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “If the world could remain within a frame Like a painting on a wall, Then I think we would see the beauty, then We would stand staring in awe At our still lives posed Like a bowl of oranges, Like a story told By the fault lines and the soil.”

  Conor Oberst (born 1980) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Some paintings become famous because, being durable, they are viewed by successive generations, in each of which are likely to be found a few appreciative eyes. I know a painting so evanescent that it is seldom viewed at all, except by some wandering deer. It is a river who wields the brush, and it is the same river who, before I can bring my friends to view his work, erases it forever.”

  Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Wharton was captivated by her sweet face, and tried to make her understand his theory that the merit of a painting was not so much in what it explained as in what it suggested.”

  Henry Adams (1838–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Unlike Rachel, Player One has a complete overview both of the world and of time. Player One’s life is more like a painting than it is a story. Player One can see everything with a glance and can change tenses at will. Player One has ultimate freedom, the ultimate software on the ultimate hardware. That realm is also the one place where Player One feels, for lack of a better word, normal.”

  Douglas Coupland (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Tone is light in another shape. In music, instruments perform the functions of the colours employed in painting.”

  Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) first seen 1837 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Gambara (1837)

• “[the painting 'Yard with Lunatics' shows] ..a yard with lunatics, and two of them fighting completely naked while their warder beats them, and others in sacks; (it is a scene I witnessed at first hand in Zaragoza).”

  Francisco Goya (1746–1828) first seen 1794 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: letter to his friend Bernardo de Iriarte, 7 Jan, 1794; as quoted by Jane Kromm, in The art of frenzy, 2002, p. 194

• “The author [Goya] is convinced that it is as proper for painting to criticize human error and vice as for poetry and prose to do so, although criticism is usually taken to be exclusively the business of literature.”

  Francisco Goya (1746–1828) said by 1828 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Painting (like poetry) chooses from universals what is most apposite. It brings together in a single imaginery being circumstances and characteristics which occur in nature in many different persons.”

  Francisco Goya (1746–1828) first seen 1799 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: the announcement in the paper of 6. Feb. 1799 was necessary because Goya was unable to find regular bookshops to sell the Capricho-prints. That year 300 sets were printed, which meant 24.000 prints!! - without the mis-p…

• “..As a matter of fact, last winter I was painting on ivory; I've already got a collection of forty studies, but these are original miniatures, of a kind I've never seen before, entirely done with the point of a brush, with details that are closer to the brushwork of Velásquez than to that of Mengs.”

  Francisco Goya (1746–1828) said by 1828 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Whatever is valuable in painting is precisely what one is incapable of talking about.”

  Georges Braque (1882–1963) first seen 1945 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: two quotes by Braque, in 'Les Problèmes de la Peinture', interview with Gaston Diehl Paris 1945

• “By using a white paint applied to the canvas I make a napkin. But I am sure the white shape is something conceived before knowing what it was to become. This means that a certain transformation has taken place.. .In a painting, what counts is the unexpected.”

  Georges Braque (1882–1963) first seen 1959 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Quote by Braque, from 'Le Monologue du Peintre', George Charbonnier, Paris 1959

• “I would say that it was 'poetry' which distinguishes the cubist paintings which Picasso and I arrived at intuitively from the lifeless sort of painting which those who followed us tried, with such unfortunate results, to arrive at theoretically.”

  Georges Braque (1882–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The painting is finished when it has erased the idea.”

  Georges Braque (1882–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: as quoted in Georges Braque: A Life (2005), p. 191

• “...when objects shattered into fragments appeared in my painting about 1909; this for me was a way of getting closest to the object.. .Fragmentation helped me to establish space and movement in space.”

  Georges Braque (1882–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “You are Great, Little Man, when you are not small and petty. You are great when you carry on your trade lovingly, when you enjoy carving and building and painting and decorating and sowing, when you enjoy the blue sky and the deer and the dew and music and dancing, your growing children and the beautiful body of your woman or your man, when you learn to understand and think about life.”

  Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) said by 1957 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “For 338 paragraphs the Franks report painted a splendid picture, delineated the light and the shade, and the glowing colours in it, and when Franks got to paragraph 339 he got fed up with the canvas he was painting and chucked a bucket of whitewash over it.”

  James Callaghan (1912–2005) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (26 January 1983) responding to the Franks Inquiry into intelligence before the Falklands War.

• “Well, it's just a sense of personal satisfaction. Just like taking a good photograph or painting a picture or playing a good golf game or something, it's the thing in itself that justifies it.”

  William Rehnquist (1924–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Anita – I am so glad I'm out here – I can't tell you how much I like it. I like the plains – and I like the work [her painting] – everything is so ridiculously new – and there is something about it that just makes you glad you're living here – You understand – there is nothing here – so maybe there is something wrong with me that I am liking it so much.”

  Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Canyon, Texas (September 1916), p. 187

• “I had wanted to talk with you about lots of things.. .I am anxious to get to work for the fall – it is always my best time I had one particular painting – that tree in Lawrence's front yard as you see it when you lie under it on the table – with stars – it looks as tho it is standing on its head – I wanted you to see it..”

  Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: letter to Mabel Dodge Luhan, Taos, August 1929; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists, ed. Mara R. Witzling (New York: Universe Publishing/London: Women's Press, 1991), p. 226

• “Color is one of the great things in the world that makes life worth living to me and as I have come to think of painting it is my effort to create an equivalent with paint color for the world – life as I see it.”

  Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “On the way I stood a moment looking out across the marshes with tall cattails, a patch of water, more marsh, then the woods with a few birch trees shining white at the edge on beyond. In the darkness it all looked just like I felt. Wet and swampy and gloomy, very gloomy. In the morning I painted it. My memory of it is that it was probably my best painting that summer..”

  Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: About the summer of Art Students League, New York 1913/14

• “I painted 'the Shelton with Sunspots' [New York], in 1926. I went out one morning to look at it before I started to work and there was the optical illusion of a bite out of one side of the tower made by the sun, with sunspots against the building and against the sky. I made that painting beginning at the upper left and went off at the lower right without going back.”

  Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I find that I have painted my life, things happening in my life — without knowing. After painting the Shell and shingle [c, 1926] many times, I did a misty landscape of the mountain across the lake, and the mountain became the shape of the shingle — the mountain I saw out my window, the shingle on the table in my room. I did not notice that they were alike for a long time after they were painted.”

  Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “After I had been in Canada painting the wide white barns along the Saint Lawrence river, I thought how different the life of the Canadian farmer was from life in Cebolla. So I painted [in 1945] the Cebolla church which is so typical of that difficult life. I have always thought it one of my very good paintings, though its message is not as pleasant as many of the others.”

  Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Burn shavings and splinters of pitch pine, and when they turn to charcoal, put them out, and pound them into mortar with size. This will make a pretty black for fresco painting.”

  Vitruvius (80–15 BC) said by 15 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “A painting hangs on an ivy wall Nestled in the emerald moss The eyes declare a truce of trust And then it draws me far away Where deep in the desert twilight Sand melts in pools of the sky When darkness lays her crimson cloak Your lamps will call me home”

  Loreena McKennitt (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “My aim in painting is to create pulsating, luminous, and open surfaces that emanate a mystic light, in accordance with my deepest insight into the experience of life and nature.”

  Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: As quoted in The Artist's Voice : Talks With Seventeen Modern Artists (1962) by Katharine Kuh, p. 128

• “I put it [a still life of a pear, made by Manet there [on the wall, next to Ingres' painting 'Jupiter'], for a pear like that would overthrow any god.”

  Edgar Degas (1834–1917) first seen 1875 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: remark in a conversation with the writer Moore, ca. 1875; as quoted in The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe, Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 117

• “People call me the painter of dancing girls. It has never occurred to them that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering movement and painting pretty clothes.”

  Edgar Degas (1834–1917) said by 1917 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Painting is not very difficult when you don't know how; but when you know, oh! then, it's another matter.”

  Edgar Degas (1834–1917) said by 1917 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people.”

  Edgar Degas (1834–1917) said by 1917 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: quote from Georges Jeanniot, in Souvenirs sur Degas (Memories of Degas, 1933)

• “pinkish and bluish draperies on neutral grey grounds and black cypresses... ...The red of Jeptha's dress... ...some reddish brown, some slightly pinkish... ...Graduated blue sky... ...the ground at the front a grey violet shadow... Look for some turquoise in the blue.(Degas' working note about choosing colors for his future painting 'The Daughter of Jeptha')”

  Edgar Degas (1834–1917) said by 1917 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Quote from Degas' working notes; as quoted in The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe, Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 34

• “A great deal that had become frozen within me in Germany melted here in America and I rediscovered my old yearning for painting. I carefully and deliberately destroyed a part of my past.”

  George Grosz (1893–1959) first seen 1946 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: In his autobiography, 1946, p. 270; as quoted on Wikipedia: George Grosz

• “Don't worry, it's very clear that the painting was done by a human, most likely a human with one eye removed and a feverent if incorrect understanding of design and anatomy.”

  Ryan North (born 1980) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me." After a pause full of intense thought on my part, I asked: "But if one hasn't always emotion. What then?" "Do not paint," he quickly answered. "When I came in here to work this morning I had no emotion, so I took a horseback ride. When I returned I felt like painting, and had all the emotion I wanted.”

  Henri Matisse (1869–1954) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Interview with Clara T. MacChesney (1912), in Matisse on Art (1995) edited by Jack D. Flam, p. 66

• “I believe easel painting to be a dying form, and the tendency of modern feeling is toward the wall picture or mural..”

  Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) first seen 1944 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: In his application for a grant given by the Guggenheim Foundation 1944; as quoted in Barbara Hess Abstract expressionism, Cologne: Taschen (2006), p. 9

• “It came into existence because I had to paint it. Any attempt on my part to say something about it, to attempt explanation of the inexplicable, could only destroy it. [1947, on his painting 'She wolf']”

  Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: As quoted in David Anfam Abstract Expressionism, London: Thames and Hudson (1990), p. 87

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