“Contented, unambitious people are all very well in their way. They form a neat, useful background for great portraits to be painted against, and they make a respectable, if not particularly intelligent, audience for the active spirits of the age to play before. I have not a word to say against contented people so long as they keep quiet.”

— Jerome K. Jerome, book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

"On Getting On in the World".
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

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Jerome K. Jerome87

English humorist 1859–1927

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“Contented, unambitious people are all very well in their way. They form a neat, useful background for great portraits to be painted against, and they make a respectable, if not particularly intelligent, audience for the active spirits of the age to play before.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

“With… small-town life… there are hundreds of thousands… who are not content. The more intelligent young people… flee to the cities… and… stay there, seldom returning even for holidays. The reason, Carol insisted… is an unimaginatively standardized background, a sluggishness of speech and manners, a rigid ruling of the spirit by the desire to appear respectable. It is contentment… the contentment of the quiet dead, who are scornful of the living for their restless walking. It is the prohibition of happiness. It is the slavery self-sought and self-defended. It is dullness made God. A savorless people, gulping tasteless food and sitting afterward, coatless and thoughtless, in rocking-chairs prickly with inane decorations, listening to mechanical music, saying mechanical things about the excellence of Ford automobiles, and viewing themselves as the greatest race in the world.”

Sinclair Lewis book Main Street

Main Street (1920)

“There is no question that religions have historically played the role of making people contented with their lot. …such a doctrine would be very appealing to the ruling classes of a society. …Many societies, for this reason alone, encourage the contentment with your lot that the religious premise of heaven affords.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)

“The form of my painting is the content.”

Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015) American painter, sculptor, and printmaker

as quoted in "Abstract Art", Anna Moszynska, Thames and Hudson 1990, p. 173
1969 - 1980

“But when people like Mundassery tried to correct us, they viewed form and content as two separate categories and argued for perfection in both. That was their theory. In fact the form and content are not so separate of conflicting categories. For progressive content there must be progressive form. The progressive form is the same as perfect form. Those like Mundassery did not realize the relation between the two.”

E. M. S. Namboodiripad (1909–1998) Indian politician

EMS As A Literary Critic And Cultural Activist

“There is much virtue in a window. It is to a human being as a frame is to a painting, as a proscenium to a play, as 'form' to literature. It strongly defines its content.”

Max Beerbohm book Mainly on the Air

"Fenestralia" http://books.google.com/books?id=YZMhAAAAMAAJ&q=%22There+is+much+virtue+in+a+window+It+is+to+a+human+being+as+a+frame+is+to+a+painting+as+a+proscenium+to+a+play+as+form+to+literature+It+strongly+defines+its+content%22&pg=PA147#v=onepage, Mainly on the Air (1946), The Atlantic ( April 1944 http://books.google.com/books?id=5KAGAQAAIAAJ&q=%22There+is+much+virtue+in+a+window+It+is+to+a+human+being+as+a+frame+is+to+a+painting+as+a+proscenium+to+a+play+as+form+to+literature+It+strongly+defines+its+content%22&pg=PA85#v=onepage)

“The great generalities of the constitution have a content and a significance that vary from age to age.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870–1938) United States federal judge

Page 17
Other writings, The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921)

“The medium is as unimportant as I myself. Essential is only the forming... I take any material whatsoever if the picture demands it. When I adjust materials of different kinds to one another, I have taken a step in advance of mere oil painting, for in addition to playing off color against color, line against line, form against form etc., I play off material against material, wood against sack clothes.”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

Schwitters (1921) in: Abstract Art, Anna Moszynska, Thames and Hudson, London 1990, p. 68-69.
1920s

“When we say God is a spirit, we know what we mean, as well as we do when we say that the pyramids of Egypt are matter. Let us be content, therefore, to believe him to be a spirit, that is, an essence that we know nothing of, in which originally and necessarily reside all energy, all power, all capacity, all activity, all wisdom, all goodness.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to Thomas Jefferson (17 January 1820). Often misquoted as "God is an essence that we know nothing of" and attached to a part of his 22 January 1825 letter to Thomas Jefferson.
1820s

“There are people who have made me see shapes — and others I thought of a great deal, even people I have loved, who make me see nothing. I have painted portraits that to me are almost photographic. I remember hesitating to show the paintings, they looked so real to me. But they have passed into the world as abstractions - no one seeing what they are.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

1970s, Some Memories of Drawings (1976)

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Jerome K. Jerome87

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