Isadora Duncan Quotes

You stand your ground and you perform your art. That's what the artist does. The artist is about perfection.

A life lived for art, is never a life wasted.

If it is the mark of the artist to love art before everything, to renounce everything for its sake, to think all the sweet human things of life well lost if only he may attain something, do some good, great work - then I was never an artist.

For the serious artist does not satisfy needs

To labor in the arts for any reason other than love is prostitution.

There's obviously always danger in making music or art for art's sake. Even as Christians we can be guilty of that, being more about the art than the Artist who gave us this gift.

Art for art's sake is an empty phrase. Art for the sake of truth, art for the sake of the good and the beautiful, that is the faith I am searching for.

But where there is no art show, I would still be painting.

The market kills more artistic passion than anything else.

Art without accomplishment becomes a form of faith, sustained more by the intensity of its common practice than by the pleasure it gives to its adherents in private.

The art is more important than the artist. The work is more important than the person who does it. You must be prepared to sacrifice all the you could possibly have, be, or do; you must be willing to go all the way for your art. If it is a question between choosing between your life and a work of art -- any work of art -- your decision is made for you.

I put everything I can into a record. That's what art is for. I take a risk every time I do one with my whole being.

I was always an artist. I was a broker to earn a living, but I was always thinking about my art.

It is the mission of all art to express the highest and most beautiful ideals of man.

It is not right for painters to think that painting is like prostitution, that 'first you do it for love, then you do it for others, and finally you do it for money.

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.

The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.

I'm not looking to be an artist to make money. I'm looking to be an artist.

I don't believe that artists really are interested in money. That's not the motivation for art.

All art is a struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous.

I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living.

I've never said, 'I live for art.'

You do manage a somewhat religious attitude toward your art. It is a calling rather than a job.

Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions." "I hate them for it," cried Hallward. "An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some day I will show the world what is it; and for that the world shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray.

The arts are not a way to make a living.