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"I quote others only the better to express myself."
- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, 1533 – 1592
FAVOURITE QUOTATIONS ABOUT ART
"Painting, n. The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic."
- Ambrose Bierce, 1842-1913
"The best art is done by amateurs."
- Bob Crumb, 1943 -
"The good critic is one who recounts the adventures of his soul among masterpieces."
- Anatole France, 1844 – 1922
“Whenever a critic composes a review, I have been told, he gets a tremendous erection.”
- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, 1742 – 1799
"Most people ignore most art because most art ignores most people. My aim is to include everybody in my paintings so they can't be ignored."
- James Milroy
"Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling."
- Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 1874 - 1936
"All that is good in art is the expression of one soul talking to another, and is precious according to the greatness of the soul that utters it."
- John Ruskin, 1819 - 1900
"Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do."
- Edgar Degas, 1834-1917
"Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers."
- Willa Cather, 1873 – 1947
"The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation."
- Ezra Pound, 1885-1972
"The most pathetic man in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision."
- Helen Keller, 1880-1968
"Nothing is so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not its subject."
- George Santayana, 1863 – 1952
"It takes a long time to make a painter - even with a good artist's education - but without one it tries the patience of Job; it is a great thing if one does not go backward."
- Edward Lear, 1812-1888
"'Tis God gives skill, but not without men's hands; He could not make Antonio Stradivari's violins without Antonio. Get thee to thy easel."
- George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), 1819-1880
"You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."
- Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910
"No artist produces great art by a deliberate attempt to express his own personality."
- T. S. Eliot, 1888-1965
'The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do this; but likewise only man regards the ability to do this as a sign of superiority.'
- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, 1742 - 1799
"Art can't hurt you."
- Fred Frabb
"Life without industry is guilt. Industry without art is brutality."
- John Ruskin, 1819-1900
"There is nothing in machinery, there is nothing in embankments and railways and iron bridges and engineering devices to oblige them to be ugly. Ugliness is the measure of imperfection."
- Herbert George Wells, 1866 - 1946
"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time."
- Thomas Merton, 1915-1968
"Art is never finished, only abandoned."
- Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519
"There's more to a picture than meets the eye."
- Neil Young, 1945 -
"If painting weren't so difficult, it wouldn't be fun."
- Edgar Degas, 1834-1917
"The celebrated painter, Gainsborough, got as much pleasure from seeing violins as from hearing them."
- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, 1742 - 1799
"I would venture to warn against too great intimacy with artists as it is very seductive and a little dangerous."
- Victoria R, 1819-1901
"Put all your rage and madness into your work and live as orderly a life as possible."
- Gustave Flaubert, 1821 - 1880
"It's hard to say which is more contemptible: the fine art world with its double talk and pretensions to the cultural high ground, or the world of commercial art trying to sell to the largest mass market it can reach. A serious artist really shouldn't be too deeply involved in either of these worlds."
- Bob Crumb
"In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth."
- Patti Smith
"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth." - Marcus Aurelius, 121-180 AD
"It's wonderful to be famous as long as you remain unknown."
- Edgar Degas, 1834 - 1917
"Originality is the art of concealing your sources."
- Franklin P Jones
"The most entertaining surface on earth is the human face."
- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, 1742 - 1799
"Love and art do not embrace what is beautiful but what is made beautiful by this embrace."
- Karl Kraus, 1874 – 1936
"The wretched Artist himself is alternatively the lowest worm that ever crawled when no fire is in him: or the loftiest God that ever sang when the fire is going."
- Caitlin Thomas, 1913-1994
OTHER FAVOURITE QUOTATIONS
"Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons and daughters of the earth.
We did not create the web of life; we are merely a strand in it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves."
- Chief Seattle, 1788-1866 Native American (Suquamish) leader
"If it is dark enough, one candle will suffice."
- Sufi proverb
"There is a great power within that when used in beauty and immaculate purity can cure and heal and cause miracles. When you use it it spreads like a magic garden and when you do not use it it recedes from you."
- Lord Buckley, 1906 - 1960
"You can't always not have what you don't want."
- Chuck U. Farley, 1976 -
"Be of love a little more careful than of anything."
- E. E. Cummings, 1894 - 1962
"Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness."
- E. E. Cummings, 1894 - 1962
"The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life."
- Muhammad Ali, 1942-
"A man of spirit must not think of the word difficulty as so much as existing. Away with it!"
- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, 1742 - 1799
"One trouble with growing old is that it gets progressively tougher to find a famous historical figure, who didn’t amount to much when he was your age."
- Edgar Watson Howe, 1853-1937
"Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honoured by posterity because he was the last to discover America."
- James Joyce, 1882 - 1941
"To say that a man lieth, is as much to say, as that he is brave toward God, and a coward towards men."
- Francis Bacon, 1561-1626
"Portuguese, n. pl. A species of geese indigenous to Portugal. They are mostly without feathers and imperfectly edible, even when stuffed with garlic."
- Ambrose Bierce, 1842-1913
"Boredom is a sign of satisfied ignorance, blunted apprehension, crass sympathies, dull understanding, feeble powers of attention, and irredeemable weakness of character."
- James Brodie, 1888-1915
Managerium
The heaviest element known to science is Managerium.
This element has no protons or electrons, but it does have a nucleus composed of 1 neutron, 2 vice-neutrons, 5 junior vice-neutrons, 25 assistant vice-neutrons, and 25 junior assistant vice-neutrons all going round in circles.
Managerium has a half-life of three years, at which time it does not decay but institutes a series of reviews leading to reorganisation.
Its molecules are held together by means of the exchange of tiny particles known as morons.
- Anonymous
"Absence abates a moderate passion and intensifies a great one - as the wind blows out a candle but fans fire into flame."
- Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims
"Flow with whatever is happening and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate."
- Chuang Tzu, 369 - 286 BC
"Man with toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound."
- Confucius, 551 - 479 BC
"If the world were a logical place, men would ride side-saddle"
- Rita Mae Brown
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."
- Bertrand Russell, 1872 – 1970
"If you haven't any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble."
- Bob Hope
"I've been on a calendar, but never on time."
- Marilyn Monroe, 1926 – 1962
"It's not true I had nothing on, I had the radio on."
- Marilyn Monroe, 1926 - 1962
"Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told, 'I am with you kid. Let's go!'"
- Maya Angelou
"You don't set a fox to watching the chickens just because he has a lot of experience in the hen house."
- Harry S Truman, 1884 – 1972
"When small men cast long shadows the sun is going down."
- Venita Cravens
"A pick-pocket looks at a saint and sees only pockets."
- Proverb
"If you board the wrong train, it's no use running along the corridor in the other direction."
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1906 – 1945
"Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee."
- Helen Keller, 1880 - 1968
"Never under-exaggerate."
- Dennis James Mynall, 1912-1984
"An optimist is someone who believes we live in the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist fears this is so."
- Anonymous
"The American landscape has no foreground and the American mind no background."
- Edith Wharton, 1862-1937
"It is easier to build two chimneys than to keep one in fuel."
- Benjamin Franklin, 1706 – 1790
"When you create you get a little endorphin rush. Why do you think Einstein looked like that?"
- Robin Williams
"Erotica is using a feather; pornography is using the whole chicken."
- Isabel Allende
"Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams."
- Mary Ellen Kelly
"Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care."
- William Safire, 1929 - 2009
"People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us."
- Iris Murdoch, 1919 - 1999
"Never pick a fight with an ugly person, they've got nothing to lose."
- Robin Williams, 1951 -
“Is it not strange that men are so keen to fight for religion and so unkeen to live according to its precepts?”
- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, 1742 - 1799
"Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity."
- Anonymous (I know of no polite way to say this with sufficient emphasis)
"Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich."
- Peter Ustinov, 1921 - 2004
"There is no way to peace. Peace is the way."
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, 1869 - 1948
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