A roundup of the most popular art prints for 2025. It's always fun to see what quotations are resonating - truth, authenticity, purpose and reconnecting with nature.
View the top ten below.
Our full art collection includes over 150 original illustrations inspired by Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Dickinson, Nietzsche, Rumi, Austen, Frost, Fitzgerald and more.
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In Meditations, Aurelius distills the central pillars and tenets of stoic philosophy. Although it was essentially a journal and never intended for a general readership, it has become one of the most widely read philosophical works in the world.
In our illustration, we drew inspiration from one of Notre Dame's stained glass rose windows, a fractured relic in the shape of a Legionnaire's helmet. Like the stoic's ideal state of mind, stained glass is at once orderly and beautiful. Ideas radiate out from central first principles in a natural and inevitable succession of deductions and balancing forces. At the helmet's edge I added six pictograms, representing the four pillars of stoicism (Courage, Justice, Temperance and Wisdom) as well as two central stoic concepts: Memento Mori ("Remember Mortality"), and Amor Fati ("Love Fate").
Frost’s most anthologized and beloved poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is deceptively simple thanks to the monosyllabic introduction and elemental nature of the prose.
Throughout the poem Frost develops tension between society (the village) and nature (the woods), one representing social commitments and public expectations, the other tranquility and private will. For the narrator of the poem, there’s a mystical allure to the woods that interrupts his journey and seduces him into a state of contemplation.
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep” is that final indulgence in the lucid dreamlike state before he capitulates to his promises and social obligations.
Why is it that the most profound human truths are so often conveyed by the most eye-roll inducing, clichéd phrases? All you need is love! Live in the moment! Stop to smell the roses! Dickinson’s poetry always manages to end-run these dull platitudes and tackle the biggest, weightiest ideas.
In her poem Forever - is composed of Nows, she blitzes two of her favorites, time and mortality. We humans seem to have a unique capacity to contemplate the infinite expanse of "time." We codify it, and arrange our experience of the world along an imagined timeline: first there was then, now I am here, and tomorrow I will be there.
But useful as this ability is to human civilization (would there even be civilization without it?), it obscures a simple truth. Time is merely a series of "nows." Outside the scope of memory, there is only here and now. Dickinson’s poem explores this truth, and re-contextualizes “forever” as a stream of present tense experience.
In our illustration, this present tense is represented as a map pin, a temporal “latitude of home.” The “nows” flow along a path that winds its way forever, taking the form of a snake biting its own tail.
The final line of The Great Gatsby, the Fitzgerald novel that defined the jazz age. It was the era that ushered in modernity, a time of material excess, liberation, and intoxication. But even in the midst of the party, Fitzgerald could sense the toll such decadence takes on the human soul.
Like so many other Fitzgerald fans, we adore this quotation and its kaleidoscopic meanings. Gatsby, surrounded by unimaginable wealth, prestige and fanfare, dreams only of a future with Daisy that will recreate their past. And yet, his past is what prevents him from attaining that bright future. All pomp and circumstance aside, Gatsby is deeply relatable. Everyone, in their own way, aspires to their own vision of “one fine day.” Everyone is reaching toward the green light. And like Gatsby, we are all eventually borne, against our will, into the past.
In our illustration, a figure rows toward an ethereal, glimmering girl as her dress forms the bay. Her belt resembles a shining city, and a green jewel dangles from a string of pearls.
With one hand she sets the sun, with the other she lifts the moon.
From his beloved book, Walden—a record of his communion with nature, confrontation with the "essential facts of life," and quest for enlightenment. Thoreau exalted nature and eschewed formal religion, and his pursuit of simplicity was at once practical and spiritual.
To visually capture the spirit of Thoreau's words, we reimagined the dense crossing branches in the deep woods as pointed Gothic arches. Gothic architecture—characterized by soaring spaces and elegant symmetry—was structured to inspire awe, to draw one’s attention up and to create a sense of weightlessness. Spend some time alone in the woods, and it becomes clear from where the architects drew their inspiration.
This poignant quotation is from Chopin's beloved novel, "The Awakening,” and in our illustration, a woman slips off the words that once defined her. Kate Chopin was a feminist before her time. “The Awakening," which was published in 1899, was controversial and considered a failure. It wasn’t until the 1970s feminist movement that it became more widely read and recognized as a pioneering work in women’s literature.
This line comes at a point in the story where the protagonist is at her most triumphant. If the garment in the illustration represents the expectations and conventions she is compelled to assume, this is her most authentic, naked self. I love that she’s engaged in making art as she discovers herself.
From The Brothers Karamazov. This passage is so awesome, we included the entire excerpt in our design to provide context for Dostoevsky's stunning insight into personal responsibility.
A face comprised of text has been partially redacted, creating a self-inflicted blindfold.
The entire passage reads:
"And above all, do not be so ashamed of yourself, for that is at the root of it all… You have known for a long time what you must do. You have sense enough: don't give way to drunkenness and incontinence of speech; don't give way to sensual lust; and, above all, to the love of money. And close your taverns. If you can't close all, at least two or three. And, above all—don't lie... Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself. The man who lies to himself can be more easily offended than any one. You know it is sometimes very pleasant to take offense, isn't it? A man may know that nobody has insulted him, but that he has invented the insult for himself, has lied and exaggerated to make it picturesque, has caught at a word and made a mountain out of a molehill—he knows that himself, yet he will be the first to take offense, and will revel in his resentment till he feels great pleasure in it, and so pass to genuine vindictiveness. But get up, sit down, I beg you. All this, too, is deceitful posturing..."
Emerson was a prolific essayist and philosopher who led the transcendentalist movement. He championed individualism and man’s profound connection to nature. This quotation from his mid 19th century essay Education explores man’s divine and essential connection to the natural world.
While the concept can seem trite and alien to a 21st century reader, perhaps it demonstrates the need to reacquaint ourselves with “the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats.”
In this illustration we wanted to explore nature as an animated, living thing - in this case the grassy hill is also a buck hiding in plain sight, the tree branches suggesting antlers.
This simple observation from Kierkegaard’s journals sets the stage for his philosophy on the nature of experience, time, regret and the existential necessity of faith.
Kierkegaard was considered the father of existentialism, and later existentialist thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus built on the ideas he put forth in his great work,Fear and Trembling.In our illustration, a ship ventures into unknown waters--a sea of illegible futures. Only in the wake it leaves behind can one make sense of its course and its meaning.
From The Twilight of the Idols: or How to Philosophize with a Hammer
First: How awesome is that title?
Nietzsche's idea that hardship is not alleviated by reducing the burden of life, but by increasing our conviction to bear it with purpose strikes a chord.
For the illustration, a constellation is depicted in the shape of a globe. The hand reaching across the star map reveals a figure who willingly bears the weight.
