Art Quotes

Beauty, expression, and the human need to create. Artists and thinkers on why art matters.

21093 quotes

C
"Art speaks when words fail."
Commodus
C
"The art of living well is the greatest art."
Cato the Elder
S
"The artist and the warrior both seek to create something eternal."
Septimius Severus
C
"The art of rule is knowing which battles to avoid."
Constantine I
C
"The art of compromise is the art of lasting victory."
Constantine I
C
"Art flourishes where fear diminishes."
Constantine I
C
"Art that serves only to please is art that serves no purpose."
Cato the Younger
C
"The artist who serves only the crowd creates nothing that will endure."
Cato the Younger
H
"Beauty exists not in grand monuments alone, but in the careful proportion of all things."
Hadrian
H
"Architecture is frozen music; I merely translated the harmony of the spheres into stone."
Hadrian
H
"The Pantheon's dome asks more questions than any oracle could answer."
Hadrian
H
"A monument endures only if it speaks to something eternal in the human soul."
Hadrian
H
"The Pantheon was built to prove that human hands could touch the infinite."
Hadrian
H
"I built to last, yet all things crumble; perhaps the building itself is the only immortality."
Hadrian
H
"The Pantheon remains because it speaks in a language older than words."
Hadrian
A
"Art holds a mirror to society, showing us who we truly are."
Antoninus Pius
A
"The art of living well is knowing what deserves our attention and what does not."
Antoninus Pius
C
"A society without art is a society without a soul."
Cato the Elder
C
"The amphitheater teaches what philosophy cannot: that life is spectacle."
Commodus
C
"The greatest art is the art of dominion."
Commodus
C
"The empire is my canvas; Rome is my masterpiece."
Commodus
D
"The artist and the soldier are not so different—both seek to leave their mark."
Diocletian
D
"To neglect the arts is to neglect the soul of a nation."
Diocletian
T
"Literature and art preserve the soul of civilization"
Trajan
T
"Art is the mirror of the soul of a civilization"
Trajan
S
"Art is the voice of the soul when words fail the tongue."
Septimius Severus
H
"Architecture speaks where words grow silent."
Hadrian
H
"A circle completed is more beautiful than a line extended."
Hadrian
H
"Buildings are frozen music made eternal in stone."
Hadrian
H
"A civilization's true wealth is measured in its monuments to beauty."
Hadrian