“Rules have no existence outside of individuals: otherwise a good professor would be as great a genius as Racine.”

1905 - 1910, Notes of a Painter' (1908)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Rules have no existence outside of individuals: otherwise a good professor would be as great a genius as Racine." by Henri Matisse?

Henri Matisse60

French artist 1869–1954

Related quotes

“…talent and genius operate outside the rules, and theory conflicts with practice.”

Carl von Clausewitz book On War

On War (1832), Book 2

“Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius.”

Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) English painter, specialising in portraits

Discourse no. 3; vol. 1, p. 57.
Discourses on Art

“I can see that the Lady has a genius for ruling, whilst I have a genius for not being ruled.”

Jane Welsh Carlyle (1801–1866) Scottish writer

Letter to Thomas Carlyle (28 September 1845).

“Carl Becker has defined a professor as a man who thinks otherwise; a scholar is a man who otherwise thinks.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Contemporary Poetry Criticism”, p. 61
No Other Book: Selected Essays (1999)

“Hitler was undoubtedly a genius but he lacked self-control. He recognized no limits. Otherwise the thousand-year Reich would have lasted more than twelve years.”

Wilhelm Frick (1877–1946) German Nazi official

To Leon Goldensohn, March 10, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" - by Leon Goldensohn - History - 2007

“Greatness is the reward for genius…only a few can be great, the rest are plain good.”

Siddharth Katragadda (1972) Indian writer

page 66
Dark Rooms (2002)

“Language gradually varies, and with it fade away the writings of authors who have flourished their allotted time; otherwise, the creative powers of genius would overstock the world, and the mind would be completely bewildered in the endless mazes of literature.”

Washington Irving book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

"The Mutabilities of Literature".
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820)
Context: Language gradually varies, and with it fade away the writings of authors who have flourished their allotted time; otherwise, the creative powers of genius would overstock the world, and the mind would be completely bewildered in the endless mazes of literature. Formerly there were some restraints on this excessive multiplication. Works had to be transcribed by hand, which was a slow and laborious operation; they were written either on parchment, which was expensive, so that one work was often erased to make way for another; or on papyrus, which was fragile and extremely perishable. Authorship was a limited and unprofitable craft, pursued chiefly by monks in the leisure and solitude of their cloisters. The accumulation of manuscripts was slow and costly, and confined almost entirely to monasteries. To these circumstances it may, in some measure, be owing that we have not been inundated by the intellect of antiquity; that the fountains of thought have not been broken up, and modern genius drowned in the deluge. But the inventions of paper and the press have put an end to all these restraints. They have made everyone a writer, and enabled every mind to pour itself into print, and diffuse itself over the whole intellectual world. The consequences are alarming. The stream of literature has swollen into a torrent — augmented into a river — expanded into a sea.