“I do not want to make a stone horse that is trying to and cannot smell the air. How lovely is the horse’s sensitive nose, the dogs moving ears and deep eyes; but to me these are not stone forms and the love of them and the emotion can only be expressed in more abstract terms. I do not want to make a machine that cannot fulfil its essential purpose; but to make exactly the right relation of masses, a living thing in stone, to express my awareness and thought of these things.”

Source: Giovanni's Room

The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859)

"Tor House"
Context: If you should look for this place after a handful of lifetimes:
Perhaps of my planted forest a few
May stand yet, dark-leaved Australians or the coast cypress, haggard
With storm-drift; but fire and the axe are devils.
Look for foundations of sea-worn granite, my fingers had the art
To make stone love stone, you will find some remnant.
But if you should look in your idleness after ten thousand years:
It is the granite knoll on the granite
And lava tongue in the midst of the bay, by the mouth of the Carmel
River Valley; these four will remain
In the changes of names. You will know it by the wild sea-fragrance of the wind.

translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van Jozef Israëls's brief, in het Nederlands): Ik wil in den beschouwer mijne aandoeningen overbrengen, - ik wil hem laten boeijen door het tafereel, dat ik niet enkel met mijn bloot oog gezien hebben, maar dat ik diep in mij heb zien bewegen.
Quote of Israëls in his letter in 1891, to an unknown person; as cited in the museum-catalog, Museum Mesdag, 1996, p.236, note 10
Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1871 - 1900

Source: Snow

Sun Stone (1957)
Context: I want to go on, to go beyond; I cannot;
the moment scatters itself in many things,
I have slept the dreams of the stone that never dreams
and deep among the dreams of years like stones
have heard the singing of my imprisoned blood,
with a premonition of light the sea sang,
and one by one the barriers give way,
all of the gates have fallen to decay,
the sun has forced an entrance through my forehead,
has opened my eyelids at last that were kept closed,
unfastened my being of its swaddling clothes,
has rooted me out of my self, and separated
me from my animal sleep centuries of stone
and the magic of reflections resurrects
willow of crystal, a poplar of water,
a pillar of fountain by the wind drawn over,
tree that is firmly rooted and that dances,
turning course of a river that goes curving,
advances and retreats, goes roundabout,
arriving forever:

"Contentment".
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Source: Valley of the Dolls