Art Quotes - Page 559

Reason clears and plants the wilderness of the imagination to harvest the wheat of art.

I am not a historian. I happen to think that the content of my mother's life - her myths, her superstitions, her prayers, the contents of her pantry, the smell of her kitchen, the song that escaped from her sometimes parched lips, her thoughtful repose and pregnant laughter - are all worthy of art.

From since I could remember I've always been an artist, drawing, painting and so forth. I would also always draw made up rock n' roll characters in a band who each had their own style and personalities. I think by accident I was already becoming a fashion designer.

Prevailing prayer requires a tender, compassionate heart, a deep solicitude for the glory of God and the good of His people. Nehemiah wept and mourned.

The trade unions and the Labour Party... failed miserably. Instead of giving concrete support, and calling upon workers to take industrial action, they did nothing.

Playwriting is an oral art; it's not an art of a writer expecting to be read but a writer expecting to be heard.

A priest is the God-bearer or Christ-bearer, a living Eucharist of the divine presence, bringing a sympathetic ear and a compassionate heart in which people find God's consolation, understanding and love.

The innovative spirit was America's strongest attribute, transforming everything into a brave new world, but there lingered an insecurity about the arts.

I'm a complete hypochondriac. If my heart starts beating a little faster than normal, I think I'm having an attack.

We old bachelors smell like dogs, do we? So be it. But I must take issue with your claim that doctors who treat female illnesses are womanizers and cynics at heart. Gynecologists deal with savage prose the likes of which you have never dreamed of.

Memory always obeys the commands of the heart.

We may lay it down as an incontestible axiom, that, in all the operations of art and nature, nothing is created; an equal quantity of matter exists both before and after the experiment; the quality and quantity of the elements remain precisely the same; and nothing takes place beyond changes and modifications in the combination of these elements. Upon this principle the whole art of performing chemical experiments depends: We must always suppose an exact equality between the elements of the body examined and those of the products of its analysis.

We all come into existence as a single cell, smaller than a speck of dust. Much smaller. Divide. Multiply. Add and subtract. Matter changes hands, atoms flow in and out, molecules pivot, proteins stitch together, mitochondria send out their oxidative dictates; we begin as a microscopic electrical swarm. The lungs the brain the heart. Forty weeks later, six trillion cells get crushed in the vise of our mother’s birth canal and we howl. Then the world starts in on us.

It is a great mystery that though the human heart longs for Truth, in which alone it finds liberation and delight, the first reaction of human beings to Truth is one of hostility and fear!

Say goodbye to golden yesterdays: or your heart will never learn to love the present.

Life is an illusion. I am held together in the nothingness by art.

I believe the approach of the artist and the approach of the environmentalist are fairly close in that both are, to a rather impressive degree, concerned with the affirmation of life.

There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.

The difference between men and women is inalienable. It is not a political fact, subject to cultural definition and redefinition, but a physical verity. We do truthfully experience our lives differently because our bodies are different. It is in what we do with our experience that we are the same. We feel, absorb and examine with the same intensity, and intense experience honestly examined informs the art of both sexes equally. ... The power of imagination illuminates all human lives in common.

It was as if a morning-glory had bloomed in her throat, and all that blue and small pollen ate into my heart, violent and religious

If an opportunity scares you, that's God's way of saying you should jump at it.

When the heart and mind focus on things unseen - that's when there's a visible change in us.

That freedom that Picasso afforded himself, to be an artist in a huge number of ways, seems to be a huge psychological liberation.

Nobody gives way to anybody. Everyone just angles, points, dives directly toward his destination, pretending it is an all-or-nothing gamble. People glare at one another and fight for maneuvering space. All parties are equally determined to get the right-of-way--insist on it. They swerve away at the last possible moment, giving scant inches to spare. The victor goes forwards, no time for a victory grin, already engaging in another contest of will. Saigon traffic is Vietnamese life, a continuous charade of posturing, bluffing, fast moves, tenacity and surrenders.

Art indeed is long, but life is short.