“But how carve way i' the life that lies before,
If bent on groaning ever for the past?”

— Robert Browning

Balaustion's Adventure.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

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Robert Browning 179

English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era 1812–1889

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

As quoted in Abstract Art, Anna Moszynska, Thames and Hudson 1990, p. 206
quote after 1959, in Andre's early artistic career, when he made his sculpture 'Last Ladder'

“I find war more hateful than ever, and I groan in spirit over every life lost and every home blasted.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang (Christmas 1939), quoted in Keith Feiling, Neville Chamberlain (1946; 1970), p. 430
Prime Minister

“I know that life is a doorway to eternity, and yet my heart so often gets lost in petty anxieties. It forgets the great way home that lies before it.”

Sophie Scholl (1921–1943) White Rose member

As quoted in Sophie Scholl: The Real Story of the Woman who Defied Hitler (2009) by Frank McDonough
Context: I know that life is a doorway to eternity, and yet my heart so often gets lost in petty anxieties. It forgets the great way home that lies before it. Unprepared, given over to childish trivialities, it could be taken by surprise when the great hour comes and find that, for the sake of piffling pleasures, the one great joy has been missed. I am aware of this, but my heart is not. It seems unteachable; it continues its dreaming … always wavering between joy and depression.

“The sculptor carves because he must. He needs the concrete form of stone and wood for the expression of his idea and experience, and when the idea forms the material is found at once. …. I have always preferred direct carving to modelling because I like the resistance of the hard material and feel happier working that way. Carving is more adapted to the expression of the accumulative idea of experience and clay to the visual attitude. An idea for carving must be clearly formed before starting and sustained during the long process of working; also, there are all the beauties of several hundreds of different stones and woods, and the idea must be in harmony with the qualities of each one carved; that harmony comes with the discovery of the most direct way of carving each material according to its nature.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

quote from an extract of 'Barbara Hepworth – the Sculptor carves because he must, The Studio, London, vol. 104, December 1932, p. 332
1932 - 1946

“[it is] amusing all the same, how the peacetime life we cursed and groaned about now elevates itself with iron logic to the status of paradise..”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

letter of April 1915; in: Briefe im Kriege, pp. 33 (March 28, 1915), 64 (May 21, 1915); as quoted in 'Portfolios', Alexander Dückers; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 110
1900s - 1920s