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Favourite quotes (21448)

“Draw you pleasure, paint your pleasure, and express your pleasure strongly.”

Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) French painter and printmaker

“One does not always sing out of happiness.”

Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) French painter and printmaker

“Color does not add a pleasant quality to design - it reinforces it.”

Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) French painter and printmaker

“A painting that is well composed is half-finished.”

Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) French painter and printmaker

“I work in the mornings and in the afternoons I go to the Latin Quarter. It is a long way from the Batignolles district to the Pantheon: Fortunately there is the Metro. It amuses me to see the people squashed together, and among them are some pretty faces which I draw in the evenings, from memory, in my sketchbook.”

Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) French painter and printmaker

letter to his grandmother, c. 1883; as cited in Pierre Bonnard, by John Rewald; MoMA -distribution, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1918, p. 12 (note 1)

“I should have sent you news of myself long ago, for I know how much pleasure one derives from a letter during one's first days in the regiment. One needs it to be reminded that one is something more than a registered number and that in the past one's existence was different from that of beast. Anyway that is how I felt about the army. I was unable to connect my present existence with my former life as a civilian.... Here [in Paris in his studio in La Rue Pigalle] I am leading a studious and quite exemplary life... I am working on an important picture which is progressing well and which will be exhibited, I hope, at the [Salon des] 'Indépendants. In addition I am planning to do a screen which will also be shown at the exhibition. Otherwise nothing is happening. I may go with Vuillard to see a music publisher, but I do not expect any success as yet in that direction. I have abandoned chromolithography (ouf!) for the moment, but I shall take it up again whenever I feel impelled to interrupt my oil painting, in order to vary my pleasure's.”

Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) French painter and printmaker

in his letter to Lugné-Poë, End of 1890; as quoted in Pierre Bonnard, by John Rewald; MoMA - distribution, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1918, p. 17 - note 11
Lugné-Poe was just called then in the French army; Bonnard had left the army already, c. one year ago

“I have all my subjects to hand. I go back and look at them. I take notes. Then I go home. And before I start painting I reflect, I dream.”

Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) French painter and printmaker

quoted in Bonnard; by Sarah Witfield and John Elderfield; Harry N. Abrams Inc., New York, 1998 - ISBN 0-8109-4021-3, p. 9
Bonnard did not paint from life but rather drew his subject and made notes on the colors. He then painted the canvas in his studio from the sketches and his notes

“Imagination is merely the exploitation of our memory.”

Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) French painter and printmaker

“I am just beginning to understand what it is to paint. A painter should have two lives, one in which to learn, and one in which to practice his art.”

Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) French painter and printmaker

“Painting has to get back to its original goal, examining the inner lives of human beings.”

Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) French painter and printmaker

“My first pictures were done by instinct, the others with more method perhaps. Instinct which nourishes method can often be superior to a method which nourishes instinct.”

Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) French painter and printmaker

quoted by his brother-in-law Claude Terrasse, in 'Introduction' of Pierre Bonnard, John Rewald; MoMA - distribution Simon & Schuster, New York, 1918

“It would bother me if my canvases were stretched onto a frame. I never know in advance what dimensions I am going to choose.”

Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) French painter and printmaker

Dita Amory, in Pierre Bonnard: The Late Still Lifes and Interiors; Yale University Press, New Haven, 2009 - ISBN 978-0-300-14889-3, p. 4
Bonnard started to paint usually on an unstretched canvas

“Medicine considers the human body as to the means by which it is cured and by which it is driven away from health.”

Avicenna (980–1037) medieval Persian polymath, physician, and philosopher

As quoted in The Pursuit of Learning in the Islamic World, 610-2003 http://books.google.com.bh/books?id=KTWDxDEY-Q0C&lpg=PA75&dq=Medicine%20considers%20the%20human%20body%20as%20to%20the%20means%20by%20which%20it%20is%20cured%20and%20by%20which%20it%20is%20driven%20away%20from%20health.&pg=PA75#v=onepage&q=Medicine%20considers%20the%20human%20body%20as%20to%20the%20means%20by%20which%20it%20is%20cured%20and%20by%20which%20it%20is%20driven%20away%20from%20health.&f=false (2006), by Hunt Janin, p. 75.

“Those who deny the first principle should be flogged or burned until they admit that it is not the same thing to be burned and not burned, or whipped and not whipped.”

Avicenna (980–1037) medieval Persian polymath, physician, and philosopher

Metaphysics, Book I

“I [prefer] a short life with width to a narrow one with length.”

Avicenna (980–1037) medieval Persian polymath, physician, and philosopher

As quoted in Avicenna (Ibn Sina): Muslim Physician And Philosopher of the Eleventh Century http://books.google.com.bh/books?id=B8k3fsvGRyEC&lpg=PA85&dq=I%20prefer%20a%20short%20life%20with%20width%20to%20a%20narrow%20one%20with%20length&pg=PA85#v=onepage&q=I%20prefer%20a%20short%20life%20with%20width%20to%20a%20narrow%20one%20with%20length&f=false (2006), by Aisha Khan p. 85, which cites Genius of Arab Civilizations by M.A. Martin.

“God, the supreme being, is neither circumscribed by space, nor touched by time; he cannot be found in a particular direction, and his essence cannot change.”

Avicenna (980–1037) medieval Persian polymath, physician, and philosopher

As quoted in 366 Readings From Islam (2000), edited by Robert Van der Weyer
Context: God, the supreme being, is neither circumscribed by space, nor touched by time; he cannot be found in a particular direction, and his essence cannot change. The secret conversation is thus entirely spiritual; it is a direct encounter between God and the soul, abstracted from all material constraints.

“The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit.”

Avicenna (980–1037) medieval Persian polymath, physician, and philosopher

This was declared without citation to have been attributed to Avicenna in A Rationalist Encyclopaedia : A Book of Reference on Religion, Philosophy, Ethics, and Science (1950), by Joseph McCabe, p. 43; it was also later wrongly attributed to Averroes in The Atheist World‎ (1991) by Madalyn Murray O'Hair, p. 46. It actually originates as a statement by the atheist Al-Maʿarri, earlier translated into English in A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern (1906) by John Mackinnon Robertson, Vol. I, Ch. VIII : Freethought under Islam, p. 269, in the form: "The world holds two classes of men ; intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence."
Misattributed

“The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes.”

Avicenna (980–1037) medieval Persian polymath, physician, and philosopher

"On Medicine, (c. 1020) http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1020Avicenna-Medicine.html <br class="br">Context: The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes. Therefore in medicine we ought to know the causes of sickness and health. And because health and sickness and their causes are sometimes manifest, and sometimes hidden and not to be comprehended except by the study of symptoms, we must also study the symptoms of health and disease. Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials. Of these causes there are four kinds: material, efficient, formal, and final.

“An ignorant doctor is the aide-de-camp of death.”

Avicenna (980–1037) medieval Persian polymath, physician, and philosopher

As quoted in Familiar Medical Quotations (1968) by Maurice B. Strauss

“Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials.”

Avicenna (980–1037) medieval Persian polymath, physician, and philosopher