#ration

If you really want to do something, no one can stop you. But if you really don’t want to do something, no one can help you ↗

— James A. Owen

#art

The most difficult part ot traditional taekwondo is not learning the first kick or punch. It is not struggling to remember the motions of a poomsae or becoming aquainted with Korean culture. Rather, it is taking the first step across the threshold of the dojang door. This is where roads diverge, where choices are made that will resonate throughout a lifetime. ↗

— Doug Cook

#martial-arts #taekwondo #art

There is no ready vocabulary to describe the ways in which artists become artists, no recognition that artists must learn to be who they are (even as they cannot help being who they are.) We have a language that reflects how we learn to paint, but not how we learn to paint our paintings. How do you describe the [reader to place words here] that changes when craft swells to art? "Artists come together with the clear knowledge that when all is said and done, they will return to their studio and practice art alone. Period. That simple truth may be the deepest bond we share. The message across time from the painted bison and the carved ivory seal speaks not of the differences between the makers of that art and ourselves, but of the similarities. Today these similarities lay hidden beneath urban complexity -- audience, critics, economics, trivia -- in a self-conscious world. Only in those moments when we are truly working on our own work do we recover the fundamental connection we share with all makers of art. The rest may be necessary, but it's not art. Your job is to draw a line from your art to your life that is straight and clear.

— David Bayles

#inspiration #art

He realised, more vividly than ever before, that art had two constant, two unending preoccupations: it is always meditating upon death and it is always thereby creating life. ↗

— Boris Pasternak

#inspirational #life-and-death #art

Whenever an art form loses its fire, when it gets weakened by intellectual inbreeding and first principles fade into stale tradition, a radical fringe eventually appears to blow it up and rebuild from the rubble. Young Gun ultrarunners were like Lost Generation writers in the ’20s, Beat poets in the ’50s, and rock musicians in the ’60s: they were poor and ignored and free from all expectations and inhibitions. They were body artists, playing with the palette of human endurance. ↗

— Christopher McDougall

#beat-poetry #sports-inspirational #art

...that which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignoranve, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves ↗

— Garth Stein

#life #self-awareness #art

Art is a deception that creates real emotions - a lie that creates a truth. And when you give yourself over to that deception, it becomes magic. ↗

— Marco Tempest

#deceptions #emotions #feelings #inspirational #lie

We were kids without fathers, so we found our fathers on wax and on the streets and in history, and in a way, that was a gift. We got to pick and choose the ancestors who would inspire the world we were going to make for ourselves. ↗

— Jay-Z

#ancestry #art #fathers #inspiration #art

With the manipulation of abstract symbols, an artist can send you information without sound, change your feelings and, sometimes, even beliefs. Artists convey the unspeakable. Artists inspire. ↗

— Jonathan Culver

#artists #inspiration #shamanism #symbols #art

It is our ability to love that makes us most like the Creator…but to love in the face of loss and pain makes us more like God than ever. ↗

— Douglas Patten

#love #inspirational