The pictures I contemplate painting would constitute a halfway state and attempt to point out the direction of the future – without arriving there completely.
It doesn’t matter how the paint is put on, as long as something is said.
To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but what he aspires to.
People have always frightened and bored me consequently I have been within my own shell.
The painter locks himself out of his own studio. And then has to break in like a thief.
On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting.
The strangeness will wear off and I think we will discover the deeper meanings in modern art.
You can’t learn techniques and then try to become a painter. Techniques are a result.
Today painters do not have to go to a subject matter outside of themselves. Most modern painters work from a different source. They work from within.
It doesn’t make much difference how the paint is put on as long as something has been said. Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.
Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.
I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.
He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.
My congratulations to you, sir. Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.
Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.
I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.
Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.
The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.
I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.
It’s time to start living the life you’ve imagined.
Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.
Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.
Never say you know the last word about any human heart.
We work in the dark – we do what we can – we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.
Sorrow comes in great waves…but rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us, it leaves us. And we know that if it is strong, we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain.
She was a woman who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows on the table.
It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, for our consideration and application of these things, and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.
To take what there is in life and use it, without waiting forever in vain for the preconceived, to dig deep into the actual and get something out of that; this, doubtless, is the right way to live.
Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.
The job required the luxurious useless indoor fortitude it has always been my fortune to enjoy.
Time is so fleeting that if we do not remember God in our youth, age may find us incapable of thinking of him.
I never again want to see the face of a starving child or hear the weeping of a mother who has lost her son to war. Peace, this is what my husband gave his life for, and I want the world to know that he did not die in vain. Peace, this is what will make me very happy.
You must maintain strength of body in order to preserve strength of mind.
From time to time I show up in myself just long enough for people to know they are not in the room alone.
Kim Chinquee writes with remarkable heart and grace. Her wise capsulizings of love’s devastations and of life’s roil and disappointments come at you with a sorrowing precision that comforts even as it haunts.
While we tend to think of love as some faraway place, it is actually a place nearby that we have forgotten.
Desks are terrible places, no matter how many wheels a chair might have. You can’t do much about how drawers fill up.
If I have a problem, it is this: there is a store where everything costs a dollar.
A French traveler with a sore throat is a wonderful thing to behold, but it takes more than tonsillitis to prevent a Frenchman from boasting.
Education must not simply teach work-it must teach life.
The chief problem in any community cursed with crime is not the punishment of the criminals, but the preventing of the young from being trained to crime.
It is the wind and the rain, O God, the cold and the storm that make this earth of yours to blossom and bear its fruit. So in our lives it is storm and stress and hurt and suffering that make real men and women bring the world’s work to its highest perfection.
There can be no perfect democracy curtailed by color, race, or poverty. But with all we accomplish all, even peace.
The power of the ballot we need in sheer defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery?
There may often be excuse for doing things poorly in this world, but there is never any excuse for calling a poorly done thing, well done.
We shall never secure emancipation from the tyranny of the white oppressor until we have achieved it in our own souls.
The chief problem in any community cursed with crime is not the punishment of the criminals, but the preventing of the young from being trained to crime.
There is in this world no such force as the force of a person determined to rise. The human soul cannot be permanently chained.
I am an anarch – not because I despise authority, but because I need it. Likewise, I am not a nonbeliever, but a man who demands something worth believing in.
I came to realize that one single human being, comprehended in his depth, who gives generously from the treasures of his heart, bestows on us more riches than Caesar or Alexander could ever conquer. Here is our kingdom, the best of monarchies, the best republic. Here is our garden, our happiness.
The anarchist, as the born foe of authority, will be destroyed by it after damaging it more or less. The anarch, on the other hand, has appropriated authority; he is sovereign. He therefore behaves as a neutral power vis-Ã -vis state and society. He may like, dislike, or be indifferent to whatever occurs in them. That is what determines his conduct; he invests no emotional values.
The anarch wages his own wars, even when marching in rank and file.
For the anarch, little is changed when he strips off a uniform that he wore partly as fool’s motley, partly as camouflage. It covers his spiritual freedom, which he will objectivate during such transitions. This distinguishes him from the anarchist, who, objectively unfree, starts raging until he is thrust into a more rigorous straitjacket.
We had set out in a rain of flowers to seek the death of heroes. The war was our dream of greatness, power and glory. It was a man’s work, a duel on the fields whose flowers would be stained with blood. There is no lovelier death in the world… Anything rather than stay at home, anything to make one with the rest.
The political trend is always to be observed, partly as a spectacle, partly for one’s own safety. The liberal is dissatisfied with regime; the anarch passes through their sequence – as inoffensively as possible – like a suite of rooms. This is the recipe for anyone who cares more about the substance of the world than its shadow – the philosopher, the artist, the believer.
The anarch knows the rules. He has studied them as a historian and goes along with them as a contemporary. Wherever possible, he plays his own game within their framework; this makes the fewest waves.
We do not escape our boundaries or our innermost being. We do not change. It is true we may be transformed, but we always walk within our boundaries, within the marked-off circle.
A work of art wastes away and becomes lustreless in surroundings where it has a price but not a value. It radiates only when surrounded by love. It is bound to wilt in a world where the rich have no time and the cultivated no money. But it never harmonizes with borrowed greatness.
Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.
The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.
A Library goes on as far as thought can reach.
The great charm of cats is their rampant egotism, their devil-may-care attitude toward responsibility, their disinclination to earn an honest dollar…
There is absolutely no point in sitting down to write a book unless you feel that you must write that book, or else go mad, or die.
After all, we are human beings, and not creatures of infinite possibilities.
Some countries you love. Some countries you hate. Canada is a country you worry about.
Everything matters. The Universe is approximately fifteen billion years old, and I swear that in all that time, nothing has ever happened that has not mattered, has not contributed in some way to the totality.
I don’t suppose God laughs at the people who think He doesn’t exist. He’s above jokes. But the devil isn’t. That’s one of his most endearing qualities.
A lie does not become truth just because ten people are telling it.
Pakistan produces people of extraordinary bravery. But no nation should ever require its citizens to be that brave.
Pull a thread here and you’ll find it’s attached to the rest of the world.
Paper is the strongest material in the world; paper can handle what I can’t.
You have spent your whole life believing such untrue things. Don’t you know how alone you are, David? We are most alone when we are with the myths.
As a writer, my homeland is the desk where I work.
Nothing is an accident: it’s always someone’s fault; perhaps-but no one teaches us how to live with our mistakes. Everyone is isolated, alone with his or her anguish and guilt, and too penetrating a question can mean people are not able to face one another the next day.
Paper is the strongest material in the world. Things under which a mountain will crumble, you can place on paper and it will hold: beauty at its most intense; love at its fiercest; the greatest grief; the greatest rage.
How keen everyone is to make this world their home forgetting its impermanence It’s like trying to see and name constellations in a fireworks display.
To visit certain streets was to realise that only the sky remained unchanged there.
A good traveller is one who knows how to travel with the mind.
A good mentor offers directions and driving tips from the back seat. You still have to drive the car.
As strong as my legs are, it is my mind that has made me a champion.
Life is often compared to a marathon, but I think it is more like being a sprinter; long stretches of hard work punctuated by brief moments in which we are given the opportunity to perform at our best.
That first peak is the best place to pause and look back, to see if you took the easiest route, to learn the lessons from the first climb. And it is the best place to examine the terrain ahead, to change your plans and goals, to take a deep breath and begin climbing again.
The basis of self-discipline: Don’t allow the edges to blur.
Protect your good image from the eyes of negative viewers, who may look at your good appearance with an ugly fiendish eye, and ruin your positive qualities with their chemical infested tongues.
It is important that you strive for humility, but not humiliation, for a cool, level-headed confidence, not a stiff, delusional arrogance.
You can’t control what the other athlete is going to do; you can’t control anything except for your competition and how you execute the race or how you execute the task.
The mind is absolutely instrumental in achieving results, even for athletes. Sports psychology is a very small part, but it’s extremely important when you’re winning and losing races by hundredths and even thousandths of a second.
