Henry Moore Quotes

Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued.

Entertainment is in art like color in pictures.

I tend to have an odd split in my mind: I tend to look at it as a writer and when the writing thing is OK and I'm happy with it, then I put on my actor's hat.

The power of nature is what all art strives to be. The more we can get in tune with the harmony of the planet, the more our art can benefit from that relationship.

The art of writing fiction is to sail as dangerously close to the truth as possible without sinking the ship

Art tends toward balance, order, judgment of relative values, the laws of growth, the economy of living – very good things for anyone to be interested in.

You have to play the character in the best way you know how and do what you need to do in order to bring that character to life and not worry about the millions of people that you may be disappointing!

But it's hard to talk about art. Maybe there should be a law against it, some First Amendment gag order like crying fire in a crowded theater.

I would advise puppeteering for any artist. It's a way to break down pretensions. It's a sculpture that can talk. It's a painting that can talk. And it's pure play. I think every artist needs to stay in touch with the idea of playing. The artist should always be playing, always. All art is performance.

What makes a good work of art is something that honors certain traditions and breaks with others.

Great art is deeply ordered. Even if within the order there may be enormously instinctive and accidental things, nevertheless they come out of a desire for ordering and for returning fact onto the nervous system in a more violent way.

The contest between form and content is what, is what art is about - it's art history. That's what basically everybody has ever contended with. The problem is uniquely complex in still photography.

I am sure that there is no place in the world where your message would not be enhanced by your making the place (whether tiny or large, a hut or a palace) orderly, artistic and beautiful with some form of creativity, some form of ‘art’ (p. 213).

I think about all the people who have created something that lives after them - works of art, plays, music, films, literature, poetry that will be read, seen, performed, and heard for the rest of time. If I could do something that lives after me, then I think I will have had a life well led.

I don't buy art in order to leave a mark or to be remembered; clutching at immortality is of zero interest to anyone sane.

In putting images together I become active, and excitement is of another order - synthesis overshadows analysis.

In a work of art, chaos must shimmer through the veil of order.

The roots of art and play lie very close together.

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.

People should practice an art in order to make their souls grow and not to make money or become famous. Paint a picture. Write.

Each sensation is precious, protect it, cherish it, keep it. Never give it away. You must develop that balance which allows all of the world to come in to you, and only that which you have expressed in your art to move back out again into the world.

I think I needed to really move past my first public work as memorialist, and be equally balanced. It's a bit unusual, to be working between the architecture, the art, and what I would say is a synthesis, the memorials - they're problem solving, but it's very symbolic. You get this triangle; I need to be balanced with those three. They're all equally a part of who I am. I love how different they are, and yet they're coming out the same thing, whatever it is.

perfectionism is the enemy of art. Since art is essentially divine play, not dogged work, it often happens that as one becomes more professionally driven one also becomes less capriciously playful.

We want Realism's wealth of experience and Symbolism's depth of feeling. All art is a problem of balance between two opposites.

Most great art is freedom within form. Without form, we are amateurs, without freedom, we are robots.