Quote collection
654 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"They are the best physicians, who being great in learning most incline to the traditions of experience, or being distinguished in practice do not reflect the methods and generalities of art."
"I use all sorts of things to work with: old brooms, old sweaters, and all kinds of peculiar tools and materials... I paint to excite myself, and make something for myself."
"I think that one of the things is that, if you are going to decide to be a painter, you have got to decide that you are not going to be afraid of making a fool of yourself. I think another thing is to be able to find subjects which really absorb you to try and do. I feel that without a subject you automatically go back into decoration because you haven't got the subject which is always eating into you to bring it back - and the greatest art always returns you to the vulnerability of the human situation."
"They are happy men whose natures sort with their vocations."
"Then bless thy secret growth, nor catch At noise, but thrive unseen and dumb; Keep clean, be as fruit, earn life, and watch, Till the white-wing'd reapers come."
"So that every wand or staff of empire is forsooth curved at top."
"Boldness is ever blind, for it sees not dangers and inconveniences whence it is bad in council though good in execution."
"There is superstition in avoiding superstition."
"Take an arrow, and hold it in flame for the space of ten pulses, and when it cometh forth you shall find those parts of the arrow which were on the outsides of the flame more burned, blacked, and turned almost to coal, whereas the midst of the flame will be as if the fire had scarce touched it. This is an instance of great consequence for the discovery of the nature of flame; and sheweth manifestly, that flame burneth more violently towards the sides than in the midst."
"One always starts work with the subject, no matter how tenuous it is, and one constructs an artificial structure by which one can trap the reality of the subject-matter that one has started from."
"I want a very ordered image, but I want it to come about by chance."
"I foresee it and yet I hardly ever carry it out as I foresee it. It transforms itself by the actual paint. I don't in fact know very often what the paint will do, and it does many things which are very much better than I could make it do."
"Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience. He that travelleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel."
"Men leave their riches either to their kindred or their friends, and moderate portions prosper best in both."
"Painting today is pure intuition and luck and taking advantage of what happens when you splash the stuff down."
"The images of mens wits and knowledge remain in books. They generate still, and cast their seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in succeeding ages"
"The person is a poor judge who by an action can be disgraced more in failing than they can be honored in succeeding."
"All the crimes on earth do not destroy so many of the human race nor alienate so much property as drunkenness."
"Knowledge hath in it somewhat of the serpent, and therefore where it entereth into a man it makes him swell."
"Some artists leave remarkable things which, a 100 years later, don't work at all. I have left my mark; my work is hung in museums, but maybe one day the Tate Gallery or the other museums will banish me to the cellar... you never know."