Top 185 Mona Lisa Quotes & Sayings

I'm at that age where I watch such things with two minds, one that cackles at these capers and another that never gets much beyond a rather jaded and self-conscious smile, like the Mona Lisa.

Every work of art belongs to his time. I would not paint again the Mona Lisa in the third dimension.

I suggested that it was not enough to add a moustache to the Mona Lisa: it should simply be destroyed.

Owning the Yankees is like owning the Mona Lisa.

Da Vinci painted one Mona Lisa. Beethoven composed one Fifth Symphony. And God made one version of you.

The Mona Lisa, to me, is the greatest emotional painting ever done. The way the smile flickers makes it a work of both art and science, because Leonardo understood optics, and the muscles of the lips, and how light strikes the eye - all of it goes into making the Mona Lisa's smile so mysterious and elusive.

Sometimes I'm kind of cranky coming to see something. I saw the Mona Lisa when it was in L.A., saw it for 13 seconds and had to move on.

You cannot paint the Mona Lisa by assigning one dab each to a thousand painters.

Just in the last week of his life, you could have seen him at Walgreens or at the Electric Fetus, where he often shopped for records - an astonishing sight, like the Mona Lisa taking in her own portrait at the Louvre. Prince, paradoxically, was reclusive but always around.

Also, since art is a vehicle for the transmission of ideas through form, the reproduction of the form only reinforces the concept. It is the idea that is being reproduced. Anyone who understands the work of art owns it. We all own the Mona Lisa.

The curious thing about that moustache and goatee is that when you look at the Mona Lisa it becomes a man. It is not a woman disguised as a man; it is a real man, and that was my discovery, without realising it at the time.

Mona Lisa is the only beauty who went through history and retained her reputation.

How could we possibly appreciate the Mona Lisa if Leonardo had written at the bottom of the canvas: 'The lady is smiling because she is hiding a secret from her lover.' This would shackle the viewer to reality, and I don't want this to happen to 2001.

The music I wanted to get into when I went to California, was to, uh, get into, uh, pop, mostly. And the big band era was on at that time. I was doing the "Mona Lisa"s, the "Stardust"s, "Stars Fell On Alabama," all this kind of stuff. And that was my thing that I wanted.

Leonardo's Mona Lisa sure would have lost out if he had spent only 2 of the 4 or 5 years he took to complete it. It is thinking about him and Ryder, among others, that partly makes me feel so awful to send away a 'half-baked' painting.

I really believe that if you practice enough you could paint the 'Mona Lisa' with a two-inch brush.

I'm a producer. I'm a musician. And my job is to come in and, you know, put - you know, I treat all of the artists that I work with, like, you know, the way da Vinci was looking at Mona Lisa, you know, there's an interesting backdrop.

I don't want to say too many words about the magic of the Cube, because it's basically a mystery. It's like the Mona Lisa smile. It's both complex and very simple at the same time. And, well, people like it. Even today.

Is the Mona Lisa an 'accurate' representation of the actual human model for the painting? Who knows? Who cares? It's a great piece of art. It moves us. It makes us wonder, makes us gape - finally makes us look inward at ourselves.

Julia Roberts taught me how to knit on the set of 'Mona Lisa Smile.'

Even if you can't afford to buy a painting, you can experience it. You can go see the Mona Lisa and be transported. You can see the discipline and suffering in a van Gogh.

The problem with success is that you lose the capacity to fail and the capacity to surprise people. So, if I'm able to surprise myself every day, I can surprise you as well. If I enjoy someone's work and they offer me their project, I do it. So what's the point of the supposed creativity? If Mona Lisa could be made by anyone, then it wouldn't have been the most beautiful painting in the world. The knowledge that you can fail can make you come first.

Mona Lisa looks as if she has just been sick, or is about to be.

With all due respect, the Mona Lisa is overrated.

I was to Japanese visitors to Washington what the Mona Lisa is to Americans visiting Paris.

It is not enough to deface the Mona Lisa because that does not kill the Mona Lisa. All art of the past must be destroyed.

You should definitely visit the Louvre, a world-famous art museum where you can view, at close range, the backs of thousands of other tourists trying to see the Mona Lisa.

Everybody can draw, in my estimation. If you give a man 50 years, he'll come up with the Mona Lisa.

A lotta cats copy the Mona Lisa, but people still line up to see the original.

The geometry of landscape and situation seems to create its own systems of time, the sense of a dynamic element which is cinematizing the events of the canvas, translating a posture or ceremony into dynamic terms. The greatest movie of the 20th century is the Mona Lisa, just as the greatest novel is Gray's Anatomy.

Did you ever see that painting the Mona Lisa. It always reminds me of a reporter listening to a politician.

Burn the Louvre, and wipe your ass with the Mona Lisa. This way at least, God would know our names.

Generally my response to seeing something really symmetrical and perfect is... it's the scene with Jack Nicholson's Joker in the first 'Batman,' the museum scene. Him just spray-painting the Mona Lisa, and whatever, with his goons.

I feel like vocals are to music what portraits are to painting. They're the humanity. Landscapes are good and fine, but at the end of the day everyone loves the Mona Lisa.

Rock and Roll adolescent hoodlums storm the streets of all nations. They rush into the Louvre and throw acid in the Mona Lisa's face.

Why learn a number like pi to so many decimal places? The answer I gave then as I do now is that pi is for me an extremely beautiful and utterly unique thing. Like the Mona Lisa or a Mozart symphony, pi is its own reason for loving it.

. . . a jostling scrum of office buildings so mediocre that the only way you ever remember them is by the frustration they induce - like a basketball team standing shoulder to shoulder between you and the Mona Lisa.

Could Hamlet have been written bya committee, or the Mona Lisa painted by a club? Could the NewTestament have been composed as a conference report?

Actually, my real name is not Mona. It's Jasmeet. I changed it to Mona when I came to Mumbai.

Inside the museum infinity goes up on trial. Voices echo, 'This is what salvation must be like after a while.' But Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues; you can tell by the way she smiles.

Radical self-care is quantum, and radiates out into the atmosphere, like a little fresh air. It is a huge gift to the world. When people respond by saying, “Well, isn’t she full of herself,” smile obliquely, like Mona Lisa, and make both of you a nice cup of tea.

Back then, Lisa Lisa was somebody that I liked. She was Puerto Rican, and I related to her somewhat. I was a little bit of a fan.

I went to the Louvre in Paris, and I saw all the paintings and the Mona Lisa. You don't really see something like that every day. I was looking at it, and everything else in the room just shut out. Like, Leonardo Da Vinci painted this thing - this is unreal that he touched that. It had this crazy effect on me.

You know, people call mystery novels or thrillers 'puzzles.' I never understood that, because when I buy a puzzle, I already know what it is. It's on the box. And even if I don't, if it's a 5,000-piece puzzle of the 'Mona Lisa', it's not like I put the last piece in and go, 'I had no idea it's the 'Mona Lisa'!'

I used to always sing my way into the movies and the basketball games or whatever. I'd sing for whoever's on the door, and they'd let me in. I used to think I was Nat King Cole back in the day, you know. So I'd sing something like, 'Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, men have named you,' and they'd let me in.

Hey, even the Mona Lisa is falling apart.

If you think of any past artist, there was something that they looked at that inspired them to make their most famous pieces, whether it be the 'Mona Lisa' or 'Venus Rising.'

What is Mona Lisa thinking? Nothing, of course. Her blankness is her menace and our fear. [...] Walter Pater is to call her a 'vampire,' coasting through history on her secret tasks.

Leonardo's Mona Lisa is just a thousand thousand smears of paint. Michelangelo's David is just a million hits with a hammer. We're all of us a million bits put together the right way.

Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues; you can tell by the way she smiles.

Nothing is static. Even the Mona Lisa is falling apart. Since fight club, I can wiggle half the teeth in my jaw. Maybe self-improvement isn't the answer. Maybe self-destruction is the answer.

Well, is it pornography or is it art? Well as far as I'm concerned, the Mona Lisa is art.

Mona knocked at the wrong time. “Uh…yeah…wait a minute, Mona -- ” Mona shouted through the door. “Room service, gentlemen. Just pull the covers up.” Michael grinned at Jon. “My roommate. Brace yourself.” Seconds later, Mona burst through the doorway with a tray of coffee and croissants. “Hi! I’m Nancy Drew! You must be the Hardy Boys!

Pat Nixon was called the Mona Lisa of American politics. She never wrote anything. Her interviews tell us nothing.

One minute you're bleeding. The next minute you're hemorrhaging. The next minute you're painting the Mona Lisa.

We look at the Mona Lisa and say we're going to do our version of the Mona Lisa. We mirror it. But exaptation would say that painting the Mona Lisa would lead to a whole new place... Bugs Bunny.

If I had a euro for every stupid thing I've done, I could buy the Mona Lisa.

I was sick of people making fun of my hair and so I cut it off and I've got much more attention than ever before. It was like when Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1906 - three times more people came to see where it used to be.

You wouldn't get rid of the Mona Lisa just because someone painted another picture of a woman smiling.

My movies are film-paintings - moving portraits captured on celluloid. I'll layer that with sound to create a unique mood -- like if the Mona Lisa opened her mouth, and there would be a wind, and she'd turn back and smile. It would be strange and beautiful.