A quote from Van Gogh

'If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.'

- Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)

A quote by Whitney Houston

"I believe that children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the beauty they possess inside."

A quote from Robin Williams

"There’s no shame in failing. The only shame is not giving things your best shot."

The 'Old Guitarist' challenged art's standards of beauty

For much of Western art history, the definition of “beauty” in art was dictated by academies rather than personal taste. Artists like Picasso challenged these standards with works considered “ugly” for discarding anatomical accuracy or linear perspective in favor of a feeling.

A quote by Lucille Ball

"Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world."

'You will never feel proud of your work if you find no joy within it; your best work is always joyful work.'

- Stevie Wonder (1950-present)

A quote by Florence Nightingale

"Poetry and imagination begin life."

'I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.'

- Actress and singer Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992)

'Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.'

- Maya Angelou

'Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.'

- Pablo Picasso

'Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an aesthetic end.'

- Author James Joyce (1882 -1941)

'We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.'

- Playwright Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

'The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.'

- Marine biologist and environmentalist Rachel Carson (1907-1964)

How Van Gogh painted 'Irises' in an asylum

Van Gogh’s painting titled “Irises” (1889) remains one of his most-recognized works. Created soon after the artist checked himself into an asylum, the oil painting depicts flowers from the overgrown garden in the institution. Discover more about the work and other masterpieces Van Gogh constructed during a personally tumultuous time.

Romantics sought to experience 'the sublime'

“Sublime” may be a word that’s still used in popular culture, but when Irish philosopher Edmund Burke used it in a 1757 essay, he was attempting to define an astonishment at something that was beyond full human understanding.

A quote from sports journalist Stuart Scott

"In football, as in life, the hits you don’t see coming are the ones that do the most damage."

'All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much.'

- Musician George Harrison (1943–2001)

'I don't know what you can say about a day when you see four beautiful sunsets.'

- Astronaut John Glenn (1921–2016)

Quotes by designer Gianni Versace

"You have to break a barrier every day. Fashion, to me, is born and dies every day."

Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings are often assumed to be sexual, though the artist claimed she was simply interested in highlighting the beauty of flowers that most people neglect

Twelve artworks you'll love zooming into

Zoom in on these famous paintings to see what's hiding up close, then go exploring the rest of Google's incredible Arts and Culture hub.

Visualizing where happiness comes from

Researchers asked 10,000 participants to list 10 things that recently made them happy. One author broke down the responses into subject-verb-object categories, isolating the people and events that made responders satisfied. The result highlights how simple things like having dinner or watching a movie made someone happy. Dive in and look for some ideas or tips on feeling happy today with this fascinating visualization.

'A good friend is like a four-leaf clover, hard to find and lucky to have.'

- Irish Proverb

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

A psychiatrist warns that chasing happiness can lead to misery

Rafa Euba, a retired consultant psychiatrist, argues that happiness is a vague and abstract concept that is hard to quantify. He suggests accepting that suffering and pain are a normal part of life. An attainable goal for one's life is to attempt to minimize pain, and pursue balance and contentment rather than a false ideal of permanent bliss.

The golden ratio is believed to underlie patterns in nature and beauty

The irrational mathematical constant has been cited in art, architecture, and nature since its origins in ancient Greece. Its connection to the Fibonacci sequence has associated it with spiral patterns in pineapples, pinecones, and other plants.

The world's weirdest flowers

We mostly marvel at the beauty of flowers, but some kinds of flowers are incredibly weird. This video highlights 15 of the world's strangest flowers, from the massive Titan Arum to the rare Lady Slipper Orchid.

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

See these 16 pieces of art evoking phobias of snakes, flying, spiders, and more. 

'Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,' a work by American painter Thomas Moran, inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone National Park.

The tragic Pulitzer Prize-winning image 'The Vulture and the Little Girl' (1993) generated controversy, raised concerns about ethics in photography, and eventually led to the photographer's death.

Frank Lloyd Wright's houses are historically hard to sell because they're old, subject to local landmark commissions, and often unfashionable

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother, who had died nine months before he was born

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

Poison ivy was sent to Europe in the 1600s as an exotic, ornamental oddity, where it was purposefully grown in the English royal gardens at Kew, the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, and a few other locations.

Sunflowers have long been a symbol of nuclear disarmament because they can extract large amounts of radioactive cesium from soil.

All rainbows are 'raincircles' caused by water droplets separating white sunlight into a spectrum of colors, but Earth's surface blocks the bottom half of the circle from our line of sight.

Studies suggest when you sleep is as important as how much you get, and syncing with your circadian rhythms may lead to less fatigue and improved long-term health outcomes

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

Brian Wilson wrote the Beach Boys' 'Don't Worry Baby' for the Ronettes, but the legendary girl group rejected it.

Many legends about George Washington, including his supposed wooden teeth and the story of cutting down the cherry tree, lack evidence.

'Silent' fireworks have gained more interest in recent years as a quieter celebratory option.

Waves off the coast of Nazaré, Portugal, can reach over 100 feet and are caused by the area's deep underwater canyon geography