Here’s a selection of my favorite quotes on artists.
“The artist is the antenna of the race.” – Ezra Pound
“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again.” – William Faulkner
“Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposively, to cause vibrations in the soul.” – Wassily Kandinsky
“An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.” – George Santayana
“I suppose an artist takes the elements of his life and rearranges them and then has them perceived by others as though they were the elements of their lives.” – Paul Simon
“Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.” – Henry Ward Beecher
“The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.” – Henry David Thoreau
“The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.” – Andre Gide
“To send light into the darkness of men’s hearts – such is the duty of the artist.” – Schumann
“The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.”  Francis Bacon
“An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.” – James Whistler
“Artists don’t make objects. Artists make mythologies.” – Anish Kapoor
“Every artist was first an amateur.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you’re an artist.” – David Hockney
“Even a true artist does not always produce art.” – Carroll O’Connor
“The artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing.” – Eugene Delacroix
“Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.” – Gustave Flaubert
“An artist has to be a little like Lewis and Clark, always exploring in new, uncharted directions.” – C.W. Mundy
“A great artist is always before his time or behind it.” – George Moore
“Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.” – Isaac Bashevis Singer
“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.” – Robert Hughes
“Every work of art has its necessity; find out your very own. Ask yourself if you would do it if nobody would ever see it, if you would never be compensated for it, if nobody ever wanted it. If you come to a clear ‘yes’ in spite of it, then go ahead and don’t doubt it anymore.” – Ernst Haas
“Ask yourself if you would do it if nobody would ever see it, if you would never be compensated for it, if nobody ever wanted it. If you come to a clear ‘yes’ in spite of it, then go ahead and don’t doubt it anymore.” – Ernst Haas
“You have brilliance in you, your contribution is valuable, and the art you create is precious. Only you can do, and you must.” – Seth Godin
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