“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”
“A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.”
“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
“Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.”
“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”
“The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands.”
“One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.”
“Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.”
“Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first understood.”
“I love those who can smile in trouble...”
“The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.”
“As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.”
“The smallest feline is a masterpiece.”
“I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death”
“Art is never finished, only abandoned.”
“If you are alone you belong entirely to yourself. If you are accompanied by even one companion you belong only half to yourself or even less in proportion to the thoughtlessness of his conduct and if you have more than one companion you will fall more deeply into the same plight.”
“The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.”
“I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.”
“The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.”
“Learning never exhausts the mind.”
“The knowledge of all things is possible”
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.”
“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.”
“As you cannot do what you want,
Want what you can do”
“The deeper the feeling, the greater the pain”
“It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.”
“Principles for the Development of a Complete Mind: Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses- especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
“Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.”
“One has no right to love or hate anything if one has not acquired a thorough knowledge of its nature. Great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you know it but little you will be able to love it only a little or not at all.”
“Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.”
“While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.”
“The artist sees what others only catch a glimpse of.”
“Time stays long enough for those who use it.”
“Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind.”
“Intellectual passion drives out sensuality. ”
“Life without love, is no life at all”
“Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind.”
“The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.”
“All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions”
“I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have.”
“All sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of Experience, the mother of all Knowledge.”
“Water is the driving force in nature.”
“He who thinks little errs much…”
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”
“God sells us all things at the price of labor.”
“Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!”
“A poet knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
“Our life is made by the death of others.”
“Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
“Once you have tasted the taste of sky, you will forever look up”
“He who possesses most must be most afraid of loss.”
“Average human looks without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting, moves without physical awareness, inhales without awareness of odour or fragrance, and talks without thinking.”
“You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself...the height of a man's success is gauged by his self-mastery; the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment. ...And this law is the expression of eternal justice. He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others.”
“Make your work to be in keeping with your purpose”
“Obstacles cannot crush me; every obstacle yields to stern resolve.”
“He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.”
“He who wishes to be rich within a day, will be hanged within a year.”
“He who does not oppose evil......commands it to be done.”
“In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.”
“My body will not be a tomb for other creatures.”
“Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.”
“Art is the queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.”
“Why does the eye see more clearly when asleep than the imagination when awake?”
“The acquisition of knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.”
“Truth at last cannot be hidden. Dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a judge. Falsehood puts on a mask. Nothing is hidden under the sun.”
“The mind that engages in subjects of too great variety becomes confused and weakened.”
“Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.”
“Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
“While human ingenuity may devise various inventions to the same ends, it will never devise anything more beautiful, nor more simple, nor more to the purpose than nature does, because in her inventions nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous.”
“Many have made a trade of delusions and false miracles, deceiving the stupid multitudes.”
“Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.”
“As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.”
“The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard.”
“Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie.”
“Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.”
“Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind. So we must stretch ourselves to the very limits of human possibility. Anything less is a sin against both God and man.”
“Experience does not err; only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.”
“Those who, in debate, appeal to their qualifications, argue from memory, not from understanding.”
“What is fair in men, passes away, but not so in art”
“We must doubt the certainty of everything which passes through the senses, but how much more ought we to doubt things contrary to the senses, such as the existence of God and the soul.”
“A well-spent day brings happy sleep”
“Simplicity is the best sophistication”
“He is a poor pupil who does not go beyond his master.”
“Details make perfection, and perfection is not a detail.”
“Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places.”
“The human bird shall take his first flight,filling the words with amazement,all writings with his fame,and bringing eternal glory to those whose nest whence he sprang.”
“There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.”
“Having wandered some distance among gloomy rocks, I came to the entrance of a great cavern ... Two contrary emotions arose in me: fear and desire--fear of the threatening dark cavern, desire to see whether there were any marvelous things in it.”
“He who truly knows has no occasion to shout.”
“He who does not punish evil, commands it to be done.”
“The organ of perception acts more readily than judgment.”
“Wisdom is the daughter of experience”
“Experience is never at fault; it is only your judgment that is in error, in promising itself such results from experience as are not caused by our experiments. For having given a beginning, what follows from it must necessarily be a natural development of such a beginning, unless it has been subject to a contrary influence, while, if it is affected by any contrary influence, the result which ought to follow from the aforesaid beginning, will be found to partake of this contrary influence in a greater or lesser degree in proportion as the said influence is more or less powerful than the aforesaid beginning.”
“The worst evil which can befall the artist is that his work should appear good in his own eyes.”
“The eye sees a thing more clearly in dreams, than the imagination awake.”
“If you find from your own experience that something is a fact and it contradicts what some authority has written down, then you must abandon the authority and base your reasoning on your own findings.”
“It is an acknowledged fact that we perceive errors in the work of others more readily than in our own.”
“Just as a well-filled day brings blessed sleep, so a well-employed life brings a blessed death.”
“He who can copy can do.”
“Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.”
“A wave is never found alone, but is mingled with the other waves.”
“The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance”
“All our knowledge hast its origins in our perceptions … In nature there is no effect without a cause … Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments … Science is the observation of things possible, whether present or past; prescience is the knowledge of things which may come to pass.”
“To me it seems that those sciences are vain and full of error which are not born of experience, mother of all certainty, first-hand experience which in its origins, or means, or end has passed through one of the five senses. And if we doubt the certainty of everything which passes through the senses, how much more ought we to doubt things contrary to these senses – ribelli ad essi sensi – such as the existence of God or of the soul or similar things over which there is always dispute and contention. And in fact it happens that whenever reason is wanting men to cry out against one another, which does not happen with certainties. For this reason we shall say that where the cry of controversy is heard, there is no true science, because the truth has one single end and when this is published, argument is destroyed for ever.”
“Simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication.”
“I awoke only to find that the rest of the world was still asleep.”
“As a well-spent day gives, joy in sleep
so a well-spent life brings, joy in dying”
“And you who wish to represent by words the form of man and all the aspects of his membrification, relinquish that idea. For the more minutely you describe the more you will confine the mind of the reader, and the more you will keep him from the knowledge of the thing described. And so it is necessary to draw and to describe.”
“Our life is made by the death of others”
“When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the Earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”
“You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself. The height of a man’s success is gauged by his self-mastery: the depth of failure by his self-abandonment. He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others.”
“The water you touch in a river is the last of that which has passed, and the first of that which is coming. Thus it is with time present. Life, if well spent, is long.”
“If the painter wishes to see beauties that charm him, it lies in his power to create them, and if he wishes to see monstrosities that are frightful, ridiculous, or truly pitiable, he is lord and God thereof.”
“Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.”
“I abhor the supreme folly of those who blame the disciples of nature in defiance of those masters who were themselves her pupils”
“If there's no love, what then?”
“Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation... even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.”
“Blind ignorance does mislead us O! wretched morals..open your eyes!”
“Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?”
“...the love of anything is the offspring of knowledge, love being more fervent in proportion as knowledge is more certain. And this certainty springs from a complete knowledge of all parts which united compose the whole of the thing which out to be loved.”
“If the painter has clumsy hands, he will be apt to introduce them into his works, and so of any other part of his person, which may not happen to be so beautiful as it ought to be. He must, therefore, guard particularly against that self-love, or too good opinion of his own person, and study by every means to acquire the knowledge of what is most beautiful, and of his own defects, that he may adopt the one and avoid the other.”
“Although a man be not a painter, he may have just opinions of the forms of men.”
“How may paintings have preserved the image of a divine beauty which in its natural manifestation has been rapidly overtaken by time or death. Thus, the work of the painter is nobler than that of nature, its mistress.”
“The draperies that clothe figures must show that they are inhabited by these figures, enveloping them neatly to show the posture and motion of such figures, and avoiding the confusion of many folds, especially over the prominent parts, so that these may be evident”
“In time and with water, everything changes”
“Blinding ignorance does mislead us.
O! Wretched mortals, iopen your eyes!”
“Like a kingdom divided, which rushes to its doom, the mind that engages in subjects of too great variety becomes confused and weakened.”
“a life without love, is no life at all”
“Those who fall in love with practice without science are like a sailor who enters a ship without a helm or a compass, and who never can be certain whither he is going.”
“Look at walls splashed with a number of stains, or stones of various mixed colours. If you have to invent some scene, you can see there resemblances to a number of landscapes, adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, great plains, valleys and hills, in various ways. Also you can see various battles, and lively postures of strange figures, expressions on faces, costumes and an infinite number of things, which you can reduce to good integrated form. This happens on such walls and varicoloured stones, (which act) like the sound of bells, in whose peeling you can find every name and word that you can imagine.Do not despise my opinion, when I remind you that it should not hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or the ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which, if you consider them well, you may find really marvelous ideas. The mind of the painter is stimulated to new discoveries, the composition of battles of animals and men, various compositions of landscapes and monstrous things, such as devils and similar things, which may bring you honor, because by indistinct things the mind is stimulated to new inventions.”
“You will never fail unless you don't have an aim.”
