Artist Quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

In art, the best is good enough.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Create, artist, do not talk.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Art is a mediator of the unspeakable.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Art will always be art.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

In every artist there is a touch of audacity without which no talent is conceivable.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The arts are the salt of the earth; as salt relates to food, the arts relate to technology.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Painting and tattooing the body is a return to animalism.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The artist has a twofold relation to nature; he is at once her master and her slave.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Ah, God! but Art is long, And Life, alas! is fleeting.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Art is constitutive-the artist determines beauty. He does not take it over.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What matters in art is not thinking but making.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The artist who is not also a craftsman is no good; but, alas, most of our artists are nothing else.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To be sure, a good work of art can and will have moral consequences, but to demand of the artists moral intentions,…

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Many young painters would never have taken their pencils in hand if they could have felt, known, and understood, early enough, what…

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The connoisseur of art must be able to appreciate what is simply beautiful, but the common run of people is satisfied with…

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

For the nature of a women is closely allied to art. [Ger., Denn das Naturell der Frauen Ist so nah mit Kunst…

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When Nature begins to reveal her open secret to a man, he feels an irresistible longing for her worthiest interpreter, Art.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There is no better deliverance from the world than through art, and a man can form no surer bond with it.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The work of art may have a moral effect, but to demand moral purpose from the artist is to make him ruin…

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A great artist... must be shaken by the naked truths that will not be comforted. This divine discontent, this disequilibrium, this state…

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

By the artist's seizing any one object from nature, that object no longer is part of nature. One can go so far…

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The true, prescriptive artist strives after artistic truth; the lawless artist, following blind instinct, after an appearance of naturalness. The one leads…

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To live within limits. To want one thing. Or a few things very much and love them dearly. Cling to them, survey…

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The artist may be well advised to keep his work to himself till it is completed, because no one can readily help…

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity transient. To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our…

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Artists have a double relationship towards nature: they are her master and her slave at the same time. They are her slave…

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Art is a severe business; most serious when employed in grand and sacred objects. The artist stands higher than art, higher than…

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It is with art as with love: How can a man of the world,with all his distractions, keep the inwardness which an…

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The highest problem of any art is to cause by appearance the illusion of a higher reality.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Individuality of expression is the beginning and end of all art.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

True art can only spring from the intimate linking of the serious and the playful.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Give shape, artist! don't talk! Your poem be but a breath.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Nature alone is illimitably rich, and nature alone forms the great artist.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

It is after all the greatest art to limit and isolate oneself.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

In art it's not the thinking that does the job, but making.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is the intermixing of different genres.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Can we never take pleasure in nature without having recourse to art?”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe