A Quote by Henri Matisse

The truly original artist invents his own signs.

Henri Matisse

Quote Topics

Artist His Original Original Art Own Signs Truly

Quote Author

Henri Matisse
French - Artist
December 31, 1869 - November 3, 1954

In literary art, as in the art of the architect, the painter, the musician, signs that the artist is thinking of his own achievement more than of his subject always offend me.

Herbert Spencer

The second that you make a man truly free, he becomes truly good. And it is only that individual who has lost his belief in himself and his own pride of goodness and his own pride of being and his own honor who is dangerous.

L. Ron Hubbard

Originality cannot be a goal. It is simply inevitable. The truly pathbreaking step can never be predicted, and certainly not by the person who makes it at the time he makes it. He clears as he goes, evolves his own techniques, devises his own tools, ignores where he must. And his path cannot be retraced, because each of us is an original being.

Harry Partch

Clearly the hardest thing for the working artist is to create his own conception and follow it, unafraid of the strictures it imposes, however rigid these may be... I see it as the clearest evidence of genius when an artist follows his conception, his idea, his principle, so unswervingly that he has this truth of his constantly in his control, never letting go of it even for the sake of his own enjoyment of his work.

Andrei Tarkovsky

An artist cannot get along without a public; and when the public is absent, what does he do? He invents it, and turning his back on his age, he looks toward the future for what the present denies.

Andre Gide

Everyone praises Sachin Tendulkar. He may be a genius in his own right but in my book, Rahul Dravid is the artist. Dravid's defence tactics, his strokes, his cuts, his grace are truly amazing. I'd like to meet the chap sometime and take my hat off to him.

Peter O'Toole

Jesus has chosen, even in a resurrected, otherwise perfected body, to retain for the benefit of His disciples the wounds in His hands and in His feet and in His side-signs, if you will, that painful things happen even to the pure and the perfect; signs, if you will, that pain in this world is not evidence that God doesn't love you; signs, if you will, that problems pass and happiness can be ours.

Jeffrey R. Holland

I had fallen in love. What I mean is: I had begun to recognize, to isolate the signs of one of those from the others, in fact I waited for these signs I had begun to recognize, I sought them, responded to those signs I awaited with other signs I made myself, or rather it was I who aroused them, these signs from her, which I answered with other signs of my own . . .

Italo Calvino

I believe that a truly valuable artist must be an artist who realizes the impossibility of his task -and then continues to do it.

Keith Jarrett

A writer of fiction is really... a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of other men.

Ernest Hemingway

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

Henry Ward Beecher

The translator ... Peculiar outcast, ghost in the world of literature, recreating in another form something already created, creating and not creating, writing words that are his own and not his own, writing a work not original to him, composing with utmost pains and without recognition of his pains or the fact that the composition really is his own.

Lydia Davis

Another writer might question whether you're feeling competitive. But if I talk to Jonah, I know that he truly values my success more than his own. And I truly value his success more than my own. There's a generosity there.

Lisa Joy

Having a little fun at my work does not make me any less of an artist and people who appreciate truly beautiful and original creations in pottery are not frightened by innocent tomfoolery!

Clarice Cliff

Three words that still have meaning, that I think we can apply to all professional writing, are discovery, originality, invention.The professional writer discovers some aspect of the world and invents out of the speech of his time some particularly apt and original way of putting it down on paper.