Quotes About Creativity

If the painter wishes to see beauties that charm him, it lies in his power to create them, and if he wishes to see monstrosities that are frightful, ridiculous, or truly pitiable, he is lord and God thereof.

And you who wish to represent by words the form of man and all the aspects of his membrification, relinquish that idea. For the more minutely you describe the more you will confine the mind of the reader, and the more you will keep him from the knowledge of the thing described. And so it is necessary to draw and to describe.

Art is never completed, only abandoned.

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.

Painting is mute poetry, and poetry is blind painting

The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard: but if he will apply himself to learn from the objects of nature he will produce good results. This we see was the case with the painters who came after the time of the Romans, for they continually imitated each other, and from age to age their art steadily declined.

It is better to imitate ancient than modern work.

I believe man will fly and I base this assumption on the fact that God has blessed us with minds that are capable of imagining it. Anything that can be dreamt of will eventually be built. Anyone who says otherwise is a fool. (As quoted by a fictional Leonardo in DaVinci Demons)

A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not." ~ Leonardo da Vinci

Wenn auch der menschliche Geist durch vielfache Erfindungen mit verschiedenen Instrumenten auf dasselbe Ziel zugeht, nie wird er eine Erfindung machen, die schöner, leichter und kürzer wäre als die Natur.

art is never finished, only abandoned

Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen.

Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom.

Whatever— the soup is getting cold. [Last sentence of a mathematical theorem in Leonardo da Vinci's notebook, 1518]

It was the opinion of Leonardo that the temporary nature of music caused its inferiority to painting. Although durability was in itself no absolute test,—else the work of coppersmiths would be the highest art,—yet in any final scale, permanence could not altogether be disregarded. Music perished in the very act of its creation, while painting preserved the beautiful from the hand of time.

Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does Nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

He had searched to find a scientific basis for art, and discovered it in the imitation of nature, based on rational experience.

reality the fancy of his dreams, and give outward expression to the ideal within.

Just as iron which is not used grows rusty, and water putrefies and freezes in the cold, so the mind of which no use is made is spoilt.

A bird is like an instrument working according to mathematical law, and it is in the capacity of man to reproduce such an instrument

Tomaso of Florence. known as Masaccio, showed by his perfect works how those who took their nourishment from anything but nature, mistress of masters, were laboring in vain.

A painter without a brush is like a weasel without a tongue

Beauty perishes in life, but is immortal in art.

Gustavo Solivellas dice: Los hombres geniales empiezan grandes obras, los hombres trabajadores las terminan (Leonardo Da Vinci)