Famous Quotes & Sayings

Henry Moore

The whole of nature is an endless demonstration of shape and form. It always surprises me when artists try to escape from this.

Henry Moore

All the arts are based on the senses. What they do for the person who practices them, and also the persons interested in them, is make that particular sense more active and more acute.

Henry Moore

The soul cannot thrive in the absence of art.

Henry Moore

Art is to make our lives richer and fuller.

Henry Moore

Art is a continuous activity with no separation between past and present.

Henry Moore

All art is an abstraction to some degree.

Henry Moore

Art is not to do with the practical side of making a living. It's to live a fuller human life.

Henry Moore

Discipline in art is a fundamental struggle to understand oneself, as much as to understand what one is drawing.

Henry Moore

I'm very grateful that I was too poor to get to art school until I was 21. . . I was old enough when I got there to know how to get something out of it.

Henry Moore

It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work.

Henry Moore

A sculptor is a person who is interested in the shape of things, a poet in words, a musician by sounds.

Henry Moore

I find in all the artists that I admire most a disturbing element, a distortion, giving evidence of a struggle . . . . In great art, this conflict is hidden, it is unresolved. All that is bursting with energy is disturbing - not perfect.

Henry Moore

To know one thing, you must know the opposite.

Henry Moore

The observation of nature is part of an artist's life.

Henry Moore

All art should have a certain mystery and should make demands on the spectator. Giving a sculpture or a drawing too explicit a title takes away part of that mystery so that the spectator moves on to the next object, making no effort to ponder the meaning of what he has just seen. Everyone thinks that he or she looks but they don't really, you know.

Henry Moore

If I set out to sculpt a standing man and it becomes a lying woman, I know I am making art.

Henry Moore

To be an artist is to believe in life.

Henry Louis Gates

It's important to debunk the myths of Africa being this benighted continent civilized only when white people arrived. In fact, Africans had been creators of culture for thousands of years before. These were very intelligent, subtle and sophisticated people, with organized societies and great art.

Henry Louis Gates

Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.

Henry Miller

I feel that America is essentially against the artist, that the enemy of America is the artist, because he stands for individuality and creativeness, and that's un-American somehow.

Henry Miller

Art is only a means to life, the life more abundant. It merely points the way.

Henry Miller

I demanded a realm in which I should be both master and slave at the same time: The world of art is the only such realm.

Henry Miller

We're creators by permission, by grace as it were. No one creates alone, of and by himself. An artist is an instrument that registers something already existent, something which belongs to the whole world, and which, if he is an artist, he is compelled to give back to the world.

Henry Miller

To make living itself an art, that is the goal.

Henry Miller

Men are not suffering from the lack of good literature, good art, good theatre, good music, but from that which has made it impossible for these to become manifest. In short, they are suffering from the silent shameful conspiracy (the more shameful since it is unacknowledged) which has bound them together as enemies of art and artists.

Henry Miller

This is not a book in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will.

Henry Miller

The practice of any art demands more than 'mere savoir faire'. One must not only be in love with what one does, one must also know how to make love. In love self is obliterated. Only the beloved counts.

Henry Miller

The worst sin that can be committed against the artist is to take him at his word, to see in his work a fulfillment instead of an horizon.

Henry Miller

Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.

Henry Miller

The artist is the opposite of the politically minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. The artist does not tinker with the universe, he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life.

Henry Miller

Whoever uses the spirit that is in him creatively is an artist. To make living itself an art, that is the goal.

Henry Miller

A year ago, six months ago, I thought that I was an artist. I no longer think about it, I am. Everything that was literature has fallen from me. There are no more books to be written, thank God. This then? This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty . . . what you will.

Henry Miller

An artist earns the right to call himself a creator only when he admits to himself that he is but an instrument.