Robert Henri Quotes

Art happens-no hovel is safe from it, no prince may depend upon it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about.

In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption.

Nature engenders the science of painting.

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.

Art is action. The way I live my life to its highest degree is by writing, the practice of art.

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

Born of the sensibility, art sows and creates life in its turn.

A work of art is one of mystery, the one extreme magic; everything else is either arithmetic or biology.

What is art if not a concentrated and impassioned effort to make something with the little we have, the little we see?

Art is the perpetual motion of illusion. The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do for any one but inspire them?

I love art. It is uplifting.

At the center of everything we call 'the arts,' and children call 'play,' is something which seems somehow alive.

Art is both creation and recreation. Of the two ideas, I think art as recreation or as sheer play of the human spirit is more important.

For art is order, but it is born out of the chaos of life.

In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn't creak.

Music is meant to be a beautiful thing.

A drawing is simply a line going for a walk.

I love to create, and to me, the ultimate freedom of expression is a blank canvas or a block of clay to capture whatever emotions your imagination gives it.

I've never worried about being rich or famous - for me, it's all about the dancing.

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

Look at any inspired painting. It's like a gong sounding; it puts you in a state of reverberation.

We're all going about trying to make beauty in the world and trying to make order out of chaos. And that's what art is.

So, you pick this stuff here and this stuff there and then you see things in certain ways and you start visualizing and thank God I get the chance to do this. It's really the greatest thing in the whole wide world.

Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself.

My imagination can picture no fairer happiness than to continue living for art.