Dante Alighieri Quotes

Art is man's nature; nature is God's art.

You'd have to be completely crazy not to be influenced by and take from other artists. It's completely impossible not to.

Art owes its origin to Nature herself... this beautiful creation, the world, supplied the first model, while the original teacher was that divine intelligence which has not only made us superior to the other animals, but like God Himself, if I may venture to say it.

I don't write about nature, but I'm definitely very inspired by it.

Art comes out of art; it begins with imitation, often in the form of parody, and it's in the process of imitating the voice of others that one comes to learn the sound of one's own.

Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature.

There was a village watercolour society and they'd come and paint in my field. I watched them from the window, the way they would struggle this way and that to find the perfect moment. God has made every angle on that beautiful, and I felt that tremendously.

God has given us an imagination, and our imagination is really the principle tool from which all creativity and artistry comes from.

The big artist keeps an eye on nature and steals her tools.

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

Nature is the most beautiful thing we have. It's better than art because it's from the creator.

Art is the right hand of Nature. The latter has only given us being, the former has made us men.

I take stuff because I'm inspired by it.

All a musician can do is to get closer to the sources of nature, and so feel that he is in communion with the natural laws.

The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence.

I don't think I really invented anybody. I have drawn on real life.

When I am finishing a picture, I hold some God-made object up to it - a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand - as a final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there's a clash between the two, it's bad art.

Art is the child of Nature; yes, her darling child, in whom we trace the features of the mother's face, her aspect and her attitude.

Art is nature speeded up and God slowed down.

You cannot possibly invent painting all by yourself.

I'm inspired by looking at art, by looking at precedent. Looking is what you have to do if you want to make things, so you develop a critical eye.

A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great.

Nature engenders the science of painting.

Art does not begin with imitation, but with discipline.

Art is the right hand of Nature.