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Creativity Quotes

I find the words and thoughts of other artists very inspiring and often even comforting. I have compiled many of them here for you to read and save for the days when your muse needs inspiration and encouragement!

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It’s always something. — Gilda Radner

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Taking joy in life is a woman’s best cosmetic.

— Rosalind Russell

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Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain.

— Unknown

 

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

— Scott Adams

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Dreams are necessary to life.

— Anais Nin

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The creative person is both more primitive and more cultivated, more destructive and more constructive, a lot madder and a lot saner,
than the average person.

— Frank X Barron

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Time is that quality of nature which keeps events from happening all at once. Lately it doesn’t seem to be working.

— Unknown

 

Alas for those who never sing and die with all their music in them.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

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Once the mind has been stretched by a new idea, it will never again return to its original size.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

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We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.

— Anais Nin

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“Dare yourself to believe in your creativity, wherever it may lead you. Trust that where it leads, is exactly where you’re supposed to be. Your authentic self knows where you’re headed. Don’t wrestle with Spirit, collaborate with it.”

— Sarah Ban Breathnach

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It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.

— e.e. cummings

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To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.

— Joseph Chilton Pearce

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Most people see what is, and never see what can be.

— Albert Einstein

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It is a happy talent to know how to play.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.

— Langston Hughes

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I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.

— Albert Einstein

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If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

— Virginia Woolf

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A line is a dot that went for a walk.

— Paul Klee

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Fill a space in a beautiful way.

— Georgia O’Keefe

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Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

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The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

— Marcel Proust

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Forget safety, live where you fear to live, destroy your reputation, be notorious.

— Rumi

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You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.

— Maya Angelou

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You’ve got to keep the child alive; you can’t create without it.

— Joni Mitchell

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The person who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything .

— Phelps

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Fine art is that in which the hand. the head and the heart of man go together.

— John Ruskin

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The more you know, the less you understand.

— Tao Te Ching

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The world of reality has limits, the world of imagination is boundless.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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Imagination is intelligence having fun.

— Anonymous

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The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

— Francis Bacon

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In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

— Einstein

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Creativity is really the structuring of magic.

— Anne Kent Rush

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Let the beauty we love do what we do.

— Rumi

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I am an artist – my work of art is my life

— Suzuki

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Masquerading as a normal person day after day is exhausting.

— Anonymous

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Stretch your mind and fly.

— African Proverb

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Creativity flourishes when we have a sense of safety and self-acceptance.

— Julia Cameron

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There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.

— G. K. Chesterton

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If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.

— Marc Chagall 1889-1985

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The picture is not thought out and determined beforehand, rather while it’s being made it follows the mobility of thought.

— Pablo Picasso 1881-1973

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The real artist work is a surprise to himself.

— Robert Henri 1865-1929

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The artist begins with a vision – a creative operation requiring an effort. Creativity takes courage.

— Henri Matisse 1869-1954

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In my basic courses I have always tried to develop discovery and invention which, in my opinion, are the criteria of creativeness.

— Josef Albers

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You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.

— Maya Angelou

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The essential ingredient for creativity is wasting time.

— Anonymous

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Creativity is not a motive, it’s simply an attitude of open-mindedness.

— Eleanor Blair

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The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To them… a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death.

— Pearl S. Buck

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The creative act is not hanging on, but yielding to a new creative movement. Awe is what moves us forward.

— Joseph Campbell

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Creativity is essentially a lonely art. An even lonelier struggle. To some a blessing. To others a curse. It is in reality the ability to reach inside yourself and drag forth from your very soul an idea.

— Lou Dorfsman

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The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

— Albert Einstein

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Creativity is the residue of time wasted.

— Albert Einstein

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Each of us is an artist, capable of conceiving and creating a vision from the depths of our being.

— Dorothy Fadiman

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Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training.

— Anna Freud

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As a suffering creature, I cannot do without something greater than I – something that is my life – the power to create.

— Vincent van Gogh

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You can have no recipe with art. If you follow a recipe, you’re negating the creative act.

— Denise Hare

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The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.

— Robert Henri 1865-1929

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When the artist is alive in any person… he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and he opens ways for better understanding.

— Robert Henri 1865-1929

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An artist’s job is to surprise himself. Use all means possible.

— Robert Henri 1865-1929

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Do whatever you do intensely.

— Robert Henri 1865-1929

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All real works of art look as though they were done in joy.

— Robert Henri 1865-1929

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Life is finding yourself. It is a spirit development.

— Robert Henri 1865-1929

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You’ve got to keep the child alive; you can’t create without it.

— Joni Mitchell

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A creator is so completely contemporary that he has the appearance of being ahead of his generation.

— Gertrude Stein

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You don’t get into the mood to create – it’s discipline.

— Twyla Tharp

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Find a place where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.

— Joseph Campbell

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Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.

— Joseph Campbell

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One looks, looks long, and the world comes in.

— Joseph Campbell

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“Well, I’m not a lunatic but, I’m the next best thing… I’m an artist. “

— Kristopher Gentian

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If you paint in your mind a picture of bright and happy expectations, you put yourself into a condition conducive to your goal.

— Norman Vincent Peale

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Do not wait; the time will never be “just right’.
Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may
have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.

— Napoleon Hill

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There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the
intellect.

— G. K. Chesterton

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We don’t stop playing because we grow old,we grow old because we stop playing

— George Bernard Shaw

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Good art is not what it looks like, but what it does to us.

— Roy Adzak

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An inconvenience is an unrecognized opportunity.

— Confucius

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Real action is in silent moments.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

— Leonardo Da Vinci

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Imagination is more important than knowledge

— Albert Einstein

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If you have to ask what Jazz is, you’ll never know.

— Louis Armstrong

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What we play is life.

— Louis Armstrong

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Art is meant to disturb.

— George Braque

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All glory comes from daring to begin.

— Anonymouos

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Be obscure clearly.

— E. B. White

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To teach is to learn twice.

— Joubert

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Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.

— Claude Monet

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Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration.

— Igor Stravinsky

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The univers is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

— Eden Phillpotts

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Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.

— Confusius

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The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

— Marcel Proust

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It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.

— Gertrude Stein

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If you asked me what I came into this world to do, I will tell you. I came to live out loud!

— Emile Zola

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Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training.

— Anna Freud

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The secret of creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

— Albert Einstein

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An artist who makes pictures that look good but express nothing is like a writer whose words sound good but have no meaning.

— Gerald Brommer

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The best way to know life is to love many things.

— Vincent Van Gogh

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Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success.
When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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There is no abstract art. You must always start with something.

— Pablo Picasso

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The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect, but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

— Carl Jung

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If you hear a voice within you saying “you are not a painter”, then by all means paint…and that voice will be silenced.

— Vincent Van Gogh

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Where the spirit does not work with the hand,
there is no art.

— Leonardo Da Vinci

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Ask not what the world needs;
ask rather what makes your heart sing,
and go do that –
for what the world needs
is people
with hearts that sing.

— Phillip Thatcher

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Life is not a success only journey.

— Phil McGraw

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Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

— Carl Sagan

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For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing
them.

— Aristotle

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We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.

— Japanese Proverb

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I shut my eyes in order to see.

— Paul Gaugin

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It is not the length of life, but the depth.

— Ralph Wldo Emerson

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I want to know how God created the world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know his thoughts. The rest are details.

— Albert Einstein

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It is not enough for a painter to be a clever craftsman, he must love to “caress” his canvas too.

— Pierre August Renoir

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We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

— Kahlil Gibran

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Choice by choice, moment by moment, I build the necklace of my day, stringing together the choices that form artful living.

— Julia Cameron

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It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.

— Einstein

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Your work is to discover your work – and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.

— Buddha

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“All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their
opposites.”

— Marc Chagall

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“One never knows what one is going to do. One starts a painting and then it becomes something quite different.”

— Pablo Picasso

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\”Do or do not…there is no try.\”

— Yoda

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It is not what you look at, but what you see.

— Henry Thoreau

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Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.

— Camille Pissarro

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Life is a succession of moments, To live each one is to succeed.

— Corita Kent

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If you really want to do it, you do it. There are no excuses.

— Bruce Nauman

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A good artist has less time than ideas.

— Martin Kippenberger

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Art is basically made by dissatisfied people who are willing to find some means to relieve the dissatisfaction.

— John Chamberlain

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No artist is pleased. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

— Martha Graham

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I do not repudiate any of my paintings, but there is not one of them that I would not redo differently.

— Henri Matisse

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Creativity requires introspection, self-examination, and a willingness to take risks. Because of this, artists are perhaps more susceptible to self-doubt and despair than those who do not court the creative muses.

— Eric Maisel

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That painter who has no doubts will achieve little.

— Leonardo da Vinci

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People who are not artists often feel that artists are inspired. But if you work at your art you don\’t have time to be inspired.

— John Cage

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Amateurs look for inspiration; the rest of us just get up and go to work.

— Chuck Close

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When inspiration doesn’t come, I go halfway to meet it.

— Sigmund Freud

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Don’t wait for inspiration. It comes while one is working.

— Henri Matisse

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Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.

— Pablo Picasso

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Starting to paint, I felt gloriously free, quiet, and alone.

— Henri Matisse

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Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the various elements which the painter uses to express his sentiments. In a picture every separate part will be visible and… everything which has no utility in the picture is for that reason harmful.

— Henri Matisse

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I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me.

— Henri Matisse

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Creative people are curious, flexible, persistent and independent with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love of play.

— Henri Matisse

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Above all, an artist must never be too easily satisfied with what he has done…

— Henri Matisse

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You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.

— Maya Angelou

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We delight in the beauty of the butterfly but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

— Maya Angelou

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he essential ingredient for creativity is wasting time.

— Anonymous

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The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To them… a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death.

— Pearl S. Buck

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Creativity is not and never has been sensible.

— Julia Cameron

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The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

— Albert Einstein

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‎Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

— Confucius

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Artists are just children who refuse to put down their crayons.

— Al Hirschfeld

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Everything we can dream can be real.

— Pablo Picasso

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If you surrender to the wind you can ride it.

— Toni Morrison

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Be with those who help your being.

— Rumi

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Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.

— Marcel Proust

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Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you
desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

— George Bernard Shaw

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I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.

— Pablo Picasso

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Life is a great big canvas and you should throw all the paint on it you can

— Danny Kaye

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“Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I see before me, I make more arbitary use of colour to express myself more forcefully … To express the love of two lovers by the marriage of two complementary colours … To express the thought of a brow by the radiance of a light tone against a dark background. To express hope by some star. Someone’s passion by the radiance of the setting sun.”

— Vincent van Gogh, 1888.

 

“Colour and I are one. I am a painter.”

— Paul Klee, 1914.

 

“Colour helps to express light, not the physical phenomenon, but the only light that really exists, that in the artist’s brain.”

— Henri Matisse, 1945.

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“They’ll sell you thousands of greens. Veronese green and emerald green and cadmium green and any sort of green you like; but that particular green, never.”

— Pablo Picasso, 1966.

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“The craving for colour is a natural necessity just as for water and fire. Colour is a raw material indispensable to life. At every era of his existence and his history, the human being has associated colour with his joys, his actions and his pleasures.”

— Frenand Leger,, “On Monumentality and Color”, 1943.

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Over analysis leads to paralysis.

— Unknown, Heard on TV – ancing with the Stars

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“One gets into a state of creativity by conscious work. To prepare one’s work is first to nourish one’s feelings by studies which have a certain analogy with the picture, and it is through this that the choice of elements can be made. It is these studies which permit the painter to free his unconscious mind.”

— Matisse, Statement by Matisse to critic E Tériade on creativity, 1933; quoted in Jack Flam’s Matisse on Art p66.

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“As practice makes perfect, I cannot but make progress; each drawing one makes, each study one paints, is a step forward.”

— Vincent Van Gogh, (Letter to Theo van Gogh, c.29 October 1883)

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“Just slap anything on when you see a blank canvas staring you in the face like some imbecile. You don’t know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas is, which says to the painter, ‘You can’t do a thing’. The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerizes some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid in front of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares and who has broken the spell of `you can’t’ once and for all.”

— Vincent Van Gogh, Letter to Theo van Gogh, October 1884

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“We’re having marvellous weather and I wish I could send you a little of the sunshine. I am slaving away on six paintings a day. I’m giving myself a hard time over it as I haven’t yet managed to capture the colour of this landscape, there are moments when I’m appalled at the colours I’m having to use, I’m afraid what I’m doing is just dreadful and yet I really am understating it; the light is simply terrifying.”

— Monet, Colour, color, painting, landscape painting, Monet

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“I disklike a picture that is too suave or too skilfully done. But, contrariwise, I also dislike a picture that looks too inept or blundering.”

— Robert Motherwell (1915–1991)

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“I never decided at all to be an artist; being an artist seems to have happened to me.”

— Anne Truitt

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When I am in a painting, I’m not aware of what I’m doing. It is only after a sort of ‘get acquainted’ period that I see what I have been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc, because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.”

— Jackson Pollock

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“Drawing is not what one sees but what one can make others see.”

— Edgar Degas

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“Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art.” i

— Leonardo da Vinc

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“There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about.”

— Helen Frankenthaler

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“It took me 40 years to find out that painting is not sculpture.”

— Paul Cezanne

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“Practice what you know, and it will help to make clear what now you do not know.”

— Rembrandt

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“There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.”

— Pablo Picasso

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I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way–things I had no words for.

— Georgia O’Keeffe

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“Of all the arts, abstract painting is the most difficult. It demands that you know how to draw well, that you have a heightened sensitivity for composition and for colours, and that you be a true poet. This last is essential.”

— Wassily Kandinsky.

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Art is the set of wings to carry you out of your own entanglements.

— Joseph Campbell

 

“Stuff your eyes with wonder; live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.”

— Ray Bradbury

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“Unused creativity is not benign – it turns into grief. Do something with it.” –

— Dr. Brené Brown author of Daring Greatly

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The outer kingdom is not our real home. The inner kingdom is our everything.

— Marianne Williamson

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Creativity depends on a number of things: experience, including knowledge and technical skills; talent; an ability to think in new ways; and the capacity to push through uncreative dry spells.

— Teresa Amabile

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Creativity is a lifestyle, and ideas are the product and lifeblood of that lifestyle.

— Miles G. Batt

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Creativity is not a motive, it’s simply an attitude of open-mindedness.

— Eleanor Blair

 

I try to remain cognizant of the potential beauty of a single mark of the brush as an element in itself.

— Greg Allen

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After the first brush-stroke, the canvas assumes a life of its own; at this point, you become both governor and spectator to your own event.

— Anonymous

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Painting is a source of endless pleasure, but also of great anguish.

— Balthus

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The painter needs all the talent of the poet, plus hand-eye coordination.

— Robert Brault

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“Simplicity is not about making something without ornament, but rather about making something very complex, then slicing elements away, until you reveal the very essence.”

— Christoph Niemann

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“When we engage in what we are naturally suited to do, our work takes on the quality of play and it is play that stimulates creativity.”

— Linda Naiman

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Life’s challenges re not supposed to paralyze you – they are supposed to help you discover who you are.

— B.J. Reagon

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“I hate flowers – I paint them because they’re cheaper than models and they don’t move.”

— Georgia O’Keefe

 

“It is human nature to want to exchange ideas, and I believe that, at bottom, every artist wants no more than to tell the world what he has to say.”

— M.C. Escher

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“You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club”

— Jack London

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“True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.”

— Albert Einstein

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“Through a painting we can see the whole world.”

— Hans Hofmann

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“The act of painting is about one heart telling another heart where he found salvation.”

— Ai Weiwei

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“I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.”

— Joan Miro

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“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”

— Vincent Van Gogh

 

“No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.”

— Oscar Wilde

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“Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it.”

— Jasper Johns

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“What art offers is space – a certain breathing room for the spirit.”

— John Updike

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“Anyone who says you can’t see a thought simply doesn’t know art.”

— Wynetka Ann Reynolds

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“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

— Sylvia Plath

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“Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother’s womb.”

— Jean Arp

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“Whoever wants to know something about me (as an artist, the only notable thing) ought to look carefully at my pictures and try and see in them what I am and what I want to do.”

— Gustav Klimt

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“No one can be a painter
unless he [she] cares for painting above all else.”

— Édouard Manet

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“If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.”

— Michelangelo

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

— Oliver Wendell Holme

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“All colours will agree in the dark.”

— Francis Bacon

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“I carry out my work thus: I never use models or nature for the figure, drapery or anything else.”

— John Tenniel (Illustrator, born 1820)

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Whatever creativity is, it is in part a solution to a problem.

— Brian W. Aldiss

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You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.

— Maya Angelou

 

The essential ingredient for creativity is wasting time.

— Anonymous

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Creativity is a lifestyle, and ideas are the product and lifeblood of that lifestyle

— Miles G. Batt

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Creativity does not depend on inherited talent or on environment or upbringing; it is the function of the ego of every human being.

— Silvano Arieti

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The creative process is a cocktail of instinct, skill, culture and a highly creative feverishness. It is not like a drug; it is a particular state when everything happens very quickly, a mixture of consciousness and unconsciousness, of fear and pleasure; it’s a little like making love, the physical act of love.

— Francis Bacon

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The creative person is both more primitive and more cultivated, more destructive and more constructive, a lot madder and a lot saner, than the average person.

— Frank X Barron

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There are two ways of being creative. One can sing and dance. Or one can create an environment in which singers and dancers flourish.

— Warren G. Bennis

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Creativity is not a motive, it’s simply an attitude of open-mindedness.

— Eleanor Blair

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Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.

— Edward de Bono

 

Creativity is not and never has been sensible.

— Julia Cameron

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For me, creating art is accessing a shining sliver of divinity – which is all positive, loving energy. When I go to a place of negativity and fear, I find that my access is denied.

— Michael Carpenter

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All who are creative, in whatever way, are doing something very important to the well being of the world.

— Sandra Chantry

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Creativity is not a talent; it’s a way of operating.

— John Cleese

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Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.

— Mary Lou Cook

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CREATIVITY. Nothing would evolve and change without creativity – a unique power which is worth uncovering in each of us.

— Jack Dickerson

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Stillness is where creativity and solutions are found.

— Meister Johann Eckhart

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The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The way to creativity is silence.

— Maria Eskenasy

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Each of us is an artist, capable of conceiving and creating a vision from the depths of our being.

— Dorothy Fadiman

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Creativity flourishes when we have a sense of safety and self-acceptance.

— Julia Cameron

 

The need to be a great artist makes it hard to be an artist. The need to produce a great work of art makes it hard to produce any art at all.

— Julia Cameron

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Enthusiasm is not an emotional state. It is a spiritual commitment, a loving surrender to our creative process. Enthusiasm – from the Greek, ‘filled with God’ – is an ongoing energy supply tapped into the flow of life itself.

— Julia Cameron

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You will learn to enjoy the process… and to surrender your need to control the result. You will discover the joy of practising your creativity. The process, not the product, will become your focus.

— Julia Cameron

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The grace to be a beginner is always the best prayer for an artist.

— Julia Cameron

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Art is not about thinking something up. It is the opposite – getting something down.

— Julia Cameron

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As artists, we must learn to be self-nourishing. We must become alert enough to consciously replenish our creative resources as we draw on them – to restock the trout pond, so to speak.

— Julia Cameron

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When you follow your bliss, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you.

— Joseph Campbell

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It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life.

— Joseph Campbell

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If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s.

— Joseph Campbell

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The hero journey is inside of you; tear off the veils and open the mystery of your self.

— Joseph Campbell

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Find a place where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.

— Joseph Campbell

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Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.

— Joseph Campbell

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I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be. If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn’t have opened for anyone else.

— Joseph Campbell

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Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.

— Joseph Campbell

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One looks, looks long, and the world comes in.

— Joseph Campbell

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To have a sacred place is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room or a certain hour of the day or so, where you do not know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody or what they owe you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be.

— Joseph Campbell

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ing to paint, I felt gloriously free, quiet, and alone.

— Henri Matisse

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The effort to see things without distortion takes something like courage and this courage is essential to the artist, who has to look at everything as though he saw it for the first time.

— Henri Matisse

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Creativity takes courage.

— Henri Matisse

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There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so, he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.

— Henri Matisse

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An artist is an explorer. He has to begin by self-discovery and by observation of his own procedure. After that he must not feel under any constraint.

— Henri Matisse

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When I started to paint I felt transported into a kind of paradise… In everyday life I was usually bored and vexed… Starting to paint I felt gloriously free…

— Henri Matisse

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t for inspiration. It comes while one is working.

— Henri Matisse

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A large part of the beauty of a picture arises from the struggle which an artist wages with his limited medium.

— Henri Matisse

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reative people are curious, flexible, persistent and independent with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love of play.

— Henri Matisse

 

Above all, an artist must never be too easily satisfied with what he has done…

— Henri Matisse

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One gets into a state of creativity by conscious work.

— Henri Matisse

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Go on working, freely and furiously, and you will make progress.”

— Paul Gauguin

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There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are
others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a
yellow spot into the sun.

— Pablo Picasso

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Building a schedule that protects your love for what you do is critical to optimizing the quality of your life—and your work.

— Paul DeJoe

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“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.”

— Edgar Degas

 

Make each day your masterpiece.

— John Wooden

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“Hurry ruins saints as well as artists. They want quick success, and they are in such a haste to get it that they cannot take the time to be true to themselves.” They do not take the time to pause and reflect, to go inward, to tend to their soul. There is something saint-like in the act of creating and tending to the needs of your soul.

— Thomas Merton

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To create anything … is to believe, if only momentarily, you are capable of magic

— Tom Bissell, writing in Magic Hours: Essays on Creators and Creation, also celebrates this magical quality of creativity

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Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberate others.

— Marianne Williamson

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To be an artist means not to compute or count….

— Rainer Maria Rilke

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In the brush doing what it’s doing, it will stumble on what one couldn’t do by oneself.

— Robert Motherwell

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It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.

— Henri Matisse

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“The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.”

— Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch

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“A piece of art is never a finished work. It answers a question which has been asked, and asks a new question.”

— Robert Engman.

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Emotions are the color of the soul.

— Paul Young.

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Art is never finished, only abandoned.

— Leonardo da Vinci

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When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.

— Lao Tzu

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You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold. That is how important you are!

— Eckhart Tolle

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For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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“Art is when we do work that matters in a creative way, in a way that touches [people] and changes them for the better.”

— Seth Godin

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As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight.

— James Mcneil Whistler

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Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heart-ache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, to discover what is already there.

— Henry Miller

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“Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightening to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.”

— Chuck Close

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“It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.”

— Vincent van Gogh

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“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”

— Franz Kafka

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I’m not a teacher: only a fellow-traveller of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead – ahead of myself as well as you.”

— George Bernard Shaw

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You’ve gotta dance like there’s nobody watching,
Love like you’ll never be hurt,
Sing like there’s nobody listening,
And live like it’s heaven on earth.”

— William W. Purkey

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“Music and art are the guiding lights of the world. “

— Picasso.

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“Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.”

— Kandinsky

 

Why would you fly with the wings of a sparrow when the wings of an eagle have been given you?”

— A Course in Miracles

 

My idea was to choose an object that wouldn’t attract me, either by its beauty or by
its ugliness. To find a point of indifference in my looking at it, you see.

— Marcel Duchamps

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“A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write–if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What one can be, one must be.” The question for many would-be creators is simply how to get to “must.”

— Abraham Maslow

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Go into the arts.I am not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly is a way to make your soul grow., for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

— Kurt Vonnegut

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Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources”

— Albert Einstein

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“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”

— Rumi, Essential Rumi

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Creativity takes courage.

— Henri Matisse

​

There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun.

— Pablo Picasso

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“I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking”

— Albert Einstein

 

“The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.”

— Pablo Picasso

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“life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one”

— Stella Adler

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The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

— Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

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“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.”

— Erich Fromm

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“The thing is to become a master and in your old age to acquire the courage to do what children did when they knew nothing. ”

— Ernest Hemingway

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“To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it.”

— Osho

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“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

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“The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.”

— Robert Henri

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“In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.”

— Rollo May, creativity, quiet, solitude

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“The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.”

— Marcel Duchamp

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“All things that truly matter—beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace—arise from beyond the mind.”

— Eckhart Tolle

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All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without benefit of experience,

— Henry Miller

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All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without benefit of experience, and that is this: In such moments, one is playing at the game of creation.

— Henry Miller

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Do not fear mistakes, There are none,

— Miles Davis

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If you know exactly what you’re doing, what’s the good of doing it?

— Picasso

 

If you have any notion of where you are going, you will never get anywhere.

— Joan Miro

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Every line is the actual experience with its own unique story.

— Cy Twombly

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“Why would you fly with the wings of a sparrow when the wings of an eagle have been given you?”

— A Course in Miracles

​

“There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.”

— Pablo Picasso

​

“There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.”

— Pablo Picasso

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“Art is a transcendent object with a convincing presence, to those who can perceive it.”

— Ivan C. Karp (OK Harris Works of Art)

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“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way–things I had no words for.”

— Georgia O’Keeffe

 

“Life obliges me to do something, so I paint.”

— Rene Magritte

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“I hate flowers – I paint them because they’re cheaper than models and they don’t move.”

— Georgia O’Keefe

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

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

“If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.”

— Michelangelo

 

“I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.”

— Joan Miro

 

“Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it.”

— Jasper Johns

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“No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.”

— Oscar Wilde

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“Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.”

— Plutarch

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“Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither.”

— Jasper Johns

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“Make sure you love art and don’t do it if you don’t, because you’ll be found out. Don’t listen to the teachers. And feel it. Do it because you can’t do anything else. Once you’ve decided, don’t do anything else, because as someone once said, ‘art is long’.”

— David Larwill

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“I’m not an abstractionist. I’m not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.”

— Mark Rothko

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“One must from time to time attempt things that are beyond one’s capacity.”

— Auguste Renoir

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“The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.”

— Lucian Freud

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“Art is the highest form of hope.”

— Gerhard Richter

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“You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club”

— Jack London

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“An artist is forced by others to paint out of his own free will.”

— Willem De Kooning

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“Through a painting we can see the whole world.”

— Hans Hofmann

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“When you take a flower in your
hand, it is your world for a moment.”

— Georgia O’Keeffe

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I sometimes think there is nothing so delightful as drawing.

— Vincent Van Gogh

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