Henry Moore Quotes

I have always been very interested in landscape ... I find that all natural forms are a source of unending interest - tree trunks, the growth of branches from the trunk, each finding its own individual air-space.

Recently I have been working in the country, where, carving in the open air, I find sculpture more natural than in a London studio, but it needs bigger dimensions. A large piece of stone or wood placed almost anywhere at random in a field, orchard, or garden, immediately looks right and inspiring.

In my opinion, everything, every shape, every bit of natural form, animals, people, pebbles, shells, anything you like are all things that can help you to make a sculpture.

I think about sculpture all the time. I work at it for ten to twelve hours a day. I even dream about it. If as a result I was only to produce something that everyone immediately understood I would't have been thinking very profoundly.

You leave space for the body, imagining the other part even though it isn't there.

Painting and sculpture help other people to see what a wonderful world we live in.

If an artist tries consciously to do something to others, it is to stretch their eyes, their thoughts, to something they would not see or feel if the artist had not done it. To do this, he has to stretch his own first.

Discipline in art is a fundamental struggle to understand oneself, as much as to understand what one is drawing.

I think, what has this day brought me, and what have I given it?

Seeing that picture, for me, was like Chartres Cathedral.

Our knowledge of shape and form remains, in general, a mixture of visual and of tactile experiences ... A child learns about roundness from handling a ball far more than from looking at it.

There's no retirement for an artist, it's your way of living so there's no end to it.

The important thing is somehow to begin.

If I set out to sculpt a standing man and it becomes a lying woman, I know I am making art.

All good art has contained both abstract and surrealist elements, just as it has contained both classical and romantic elements - order and surprise, intellect and imagination, conscious and unconscious. BOTH SIDES of the artist's personality must play their part.

I would like my work to be thought of as a celebration of life and nature..

A piece of sculpture can have a hole through it and not be weakened if the hole is of a studied size, shape, and direction.

The observation of nature is part of an artist's life, it enlarges his form [and] knowledge, keeps him fresh and from working only by formula, and feeds inspiration.

The first hole made through a piece of stone is a revelation.

There is nothing greater than enthusiasm.

The creative habit is like a drug.

One never knows what each day is going to bring. The important thing is to be open and ready for it.

There is a right physical size for every idea.

One mustn't let technique be the consciously important thing. It should be at the service of expressing the form.

Art is not to do with the practical side of making a living. It's to live a fuller human life.

The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for the rest of your life. And the most important thing is, it must be something you cannot possibly do.

A work can have in it a pent-up energy, an intense life of its own, independent of the subject it may represent.

The construction of the human figure, its tremendous variety of balance, of size, of rhythm, all those things make the human form much more difficult to get right in a drawing than anything else.

People think that they see, but they don't.

The whole of nature is an endless demonstration of shape and form. It always surprises me when artists try to escape from this.

The artist works with a concentration of his whole personality, and the conscious part of it resolves conflicts, organized memories, and prevents him from trying to walk in two directions at the same time.

I don't know of any good work of art that doesn't have a mystery.

All art should have a certain mystery and should make demands on the spectator. Giving a sculpture or a drawing too explicit a title takes away part of that mystery so that the spectator moves on to the next object, making no effort to ponder the meaning of what he has just seen. Everyone thinks that he or she looks but they don't really, you know.

I think in terms of the day's resolutions, not the years

I find in all the artists that I admire most a disturbing element, a distortion, giving evidence of a struggle ... In great art, this conflict is hidden, it is unresolved. All that is bursting with energy is disturbing - not perfect.

Now I really make the little idea from clay, and I hold it in my hand. I can turn it, look at it from underneath, see it from one view, hold it against the sky, imagine it any size I like, and really be in control almost like God creating something.

All the arts are based on the senses. What they do for the person who practices them, and also the persons interested in them, is make that particular sense more active and more acute.

It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work.

Being an artist is celebrating life.

I'm very grateful that I was too poor to get to art school until I was 21 ... I was old enough when I got there to know how to get something out of it.

The creative habit is like a drug. The particular obsession changes, but the excitement, the thrill of your creation lasts.