Top 40 Henry Moore Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Art is the expression of imagination, not the reproduction of reality.”

— Henry Moore

2. “The important thing is somehow to begin.”

— Henry Moore

3. “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.”

— Henry Moore

4. “I think in terms of the day’s resolutions, not the years’.”

— Henry Moore

5. “To be an artist is to believe in life.”

— Henry Moore

6. “The soul cannot thrive in the absence of art.”

— Henry Moore

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

— Henry Moore

8. “I think, what has this day brought me, and what have I given it?”

— Henry Moore

9. “The creative habit is like a drug.”

— Henry Moore

10. “Clever people can copy the handwriting of an artist – it’s like forging a person’s signature.”

— Henry Moore

11. “To know one thing, you must know the opposite.”

— Henry Moore

12. “Abstraction means getting away from a visual interpretation but nearer to an emotional one.”

— Henry Moore

13. “Art is a continuous activity with no separation between past and present.”

— Henry Moore

14. “There is nothing greater than enthusiasm.”

— Henry Moore

15. “The observation of nature is part of an artist’s life.”

— Henry Moore

16. “Between beauty of expression and power of expression there is a difference of function. The first aims at pleasing the senses, the second has a spiritual vitality which for me is more moving and goes deeper than the senses.”

— Henry Moore

17. “I have always liked drawing, when you draw you see things more intensely.”

— Henry Moore

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

— Henry Moore

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

— Henry Moore

20. “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.”

— Henry Moore

21. “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.”

— Henry Moore

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

— Henry Moore

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

— Henry Moore

24. “There is a right physical size for every idea.”

— Henry Moore

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

— Henry Moore

26. “People think that they see, but they don’t.”

— Henry Moore

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

— Henry Moore

28. “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.”

— Henry Moore

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

— Henry Moore

30. “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.”

— Henry Moore

31. “I sometimes draw just for its own enjoyment.”

— Henry Moore

32. “I don’t know of any good work of art that doesn’t have a mystery.”

— Henry Moore

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

— Henry Moore

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

— Henry Moore

35. “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.”

— Henry Moore

36. “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.”

— Henry Moore

37. “A sculptor is a person who is interested in the shape of things, a poet in words, a musician by sounds.”

— Henry Moore

38. “You must always be open to your luck. You cannot force it, but you can recognize it.”

— Henry Moore

39. “All art is an abstraction to some degree.”

— Henry Moore

40. “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.”

— Henry Moore

41. “You leave space for the body, imagining the other part even though it isn’t there.”

— Henry Moore

42. “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.”

— Henry Moore

43. “Talking about one’s work releases the energy and tension to do and make.”

— Henry Moore

44. “Art is to make our lives richer and fuller.”

— Henry Moore

45. “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.”

— Henry Moore

46. “One mustn’t let technique be the consciously important thing. It should be at the service of expressing the form.”

— Henry Moore

47. “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.”

— Henry Moore

48. “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.”

— Henry Moore