“The artist who uses the least of what is called imagination, will be the greatest!”
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor
Quoted in: Giles Auty (1977) The Art of Self-Deception: An Intelligible Guide, p. 88
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“Among the swans there is none called the least,
or the greatest.”
"Evidence"
Evidence (2009)
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or the greatest." by Mary Oliver?
Mary Oliver98
American writer 1935–2019Related quotes
Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet
"Love the Wild Swan" (1935)
Context: This wild swan of a world is no hunter's game.
Better bullets than yours would miss the white breast
Better mirrors than yours would crack in the flame.
Does it matter whether you hate your... self?
At least Love your eyes that can see, your mind that can
Hear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.
Maxim Gorky (1868–1936) Russian and Soviet writer
Foma Gordeyev (1899) [also translated as The Man Who Was Afraid; the English music group Led Zeppelin would later name their record label "Swan Song".
Context: There's a little book I'm thinking of writing — "Swan Song" is what I shall call it. The song of the dying. And my book will be incense burnt at the deathbed of this society, damned with the damnation of its own impotence.
Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director
Source: Civilisation (1969), Ch. 13: Heroic Materialism
Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist
Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 71
“Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a swan, the part of a swan.”
Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece
Book I, ch. 16.
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Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters
"Two Kisses"
The Still Centre (1939)
“Remember that you are a Black Swan.”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst
Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable