Quotes about picture

A collection of quotes on the topic of picture, likeness, painting, paint.

Quotes about picture

Tom Hiddleston photo
Billie Eilish photo

“I hate smiling. It makes me feel weak and powerless and small. I've always been like that; I don't smile in any pictures.”

Billie Eilish (2001) American singer-songwriter

https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/art-books-music/a13040159/billie-eilish-interview/

Vincent Van Gogh photo
Ahmed Omaar photo

“Unless you become a big picture thinker: you will always stay where you are.”

Ahmed Omaar (1987)

Source: https://www.pinterest.com/ahmedomaar7/

Etty Hillesum photo

“Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don't come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make someone smile while they're having a piss.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Other sources
Source: Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall
Context: Bus stops are far more interesting and useful places to have art than in museums. Graffiti has more chance of meaning something or changing stuff than anything indoors. Graffiti has been used to start revolutions, stop wars, and generally is the voice of people who aren't listened to. Graffiti is one of those few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don't come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make somebody smile while they're having a piss.

Elvis Presley photo

“I'm never going to sing another song I don't believe in. I'm never going to make another picture I don't believe in.”

Elvis Presley (1935–1977) American singer and actor

After hearing Walter Earl Brown's If I Can Dream, the song inspired on Martin Luther King Jr. that would close Elvis' comeback show in 1968, and the phrase was remarked to its producer, Steve Binder. http://elvis-tkc.com/forum2/lofiversion/index.php/t15948.html

Paramahansa Yogananda photo
Bismillah Khan photo

“After a year and half Mamu told me if you see anything don’t talk about it. One night I was playing deep in meditation. I smelled something. It was an indescribable scent, something like sandalwood and jasmine. I thought it was the aroma of Ganges but the scent got more powerful. When I opened my eyes, there was Balaji standing right next to me, exactly as he is pictured. My door was locked from inside; nobody was allowed to enter when I did riyaz.”

Bismillah Khan (1916–2006) Indian musician

He said ‘play my son’ but I was sweating. I stopped playing.
Khan used to do riyaz (practice) before the temple of Balaji as advised by his mamu (maternal uncle) who had also told him not talk to any body about anything that might happen. But when he told his mamu about his seeing Balaji, mamu was annoyed and slapped him.
Quote, Power Profiles

“God has sent me pictures of the angel that stands by me and directs me what to do.”

Minnie Evans (1892–1987) American artist

Cited in: Joyce Elaine Noll (1991), Company of Prophets: African American Psychics, Healers & Visionaries. p. 80

Kurt Cobain photo
Suman Pokhrel photo

“I wanted to paint a picture,
in indelible print, across
the canvass of my heart.”

Suman Pokhrel (1967) Nepali poet, lyricist, playwright, translator and artist

<span class="plainlinks"> The Tajmahal and my Love http://www.best-poems.net/love_poems/the_taj_mahal_amp_my_love.html/</span>
From Poetry

Pablo Picasso photo
Johnny Depp photo
Edward Weston photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo
Mark Rothko photo

“A painting is not a picture of an experience; it is an experience.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

As quoted in 'Mark Rothko', Dorothy Seiberling in LIFE magazine (16 November 1959), p. 82
1950's

Pierre Bonnard photo

“My first pictures were done by instinct, the others with more method perhaps. Instinct which nourishes method can often be superior to a method which nourishes instinct.”

Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) French painter and printmaker

quoted by his brother-in-law Claude Terrasse, in 'Introduction' of Pierre Bonnard, John Rewald; MoMA - distribution Simon & Schuster, New York, 1918

The Notorious B.I.G. photo
The Notorious B.I.G. photo

“Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis. When I was dead broke, man, I couldn't picture this.”

The Notorious B.I.G. (1972–1997) American rapper

Song lyrics, Ready to Die (1994), "Juicy"

Seth Godin photo

“The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there.
People will follow.”

Seth Godin (1960) American entrepreneur, author and public speaker

Source: Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us

Susan B. Anthony photo
H.P. Lovecraft photo
Mark Rothko photo

“Pictures must be miraculous.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter
John Ruskin photo
Pablo Picasso photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
Max Lucado photo
Pablo Picasso photo

“The world doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer
Robert Capa photo

“If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough.”

Robert Capa (1913–1954) American photographer

Randy Kennedy, "The Capa Cache" http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/arts/design/27kenn.html?_r=1&ref=arts&oref=slogin, New York Times, Jan. 27, 2008.

Joseph Goebbels photo

“Goethe as an old man: he was so very punctual. At that time he also wrote many things that were very punctual. The rounded thing is boring. Turn it as you may, it remains round and pretty.
I love the edges, the sharp lines, and fractures.
I show to him a picture of Dostoevsky. How ruptured, furrowed, tormented!
He looks like Michelangelo; the face of an endurer and a prophet.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Der alte Goethe: er war so pünktlich. Er schrieb damals auch vieles, was sehr pünktlich war. Das Runde ist langweilig. Dreh es wie du willst, es bleibt rund und schön.
Ich liebe Ecken, Kanten und Risse.
Ich lege ihm ein Bild von Dostojewski vor. Wie zerrissen, wie zerfurcht und zerhauen!
So sieht auch Michelangelo aus; ein Dulder- und Prophetengesicht.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Benjamin W. Lee photo
Leonardo Da Vinci photo
Marvin Minsky photo
Robert Oppenheimer photo
Max Ernst photo

“I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world because they'd never expect it.”

Jack Handey (1949) American comedian

Deep Thoughts: Inspiration for the Uninspired (1992), Berkley Books, ISBN 0-425-13365-6

Temple Grandin photo
Ludwig Wittgenstein photo
Benoît Mandelbrot photo

“An extraordinary amount of arrogance is present in any claim of having been the first in "inventing" something. It's an arrogance that some enjoy, and others do not. Now I reach beyond arrogance when I proclaim that fractals had been pictured forever but their true role remained unrecognized and waited for me to be uncovered.”

Benoît Mandelbrot (1924–2010) Polish-born, French and American mathematician

A Theory of Roughness (2004)
Context: My book, The Fractal Geometry of Nature, reproduced Hokusai's print of the Great Wave, the famous picture with Mt. Fuji in the background, and also mentioned other unrecognized examples of fractality in art and engineering. Initially, I viewed them as amusing but not essential. But I changed my mind as innumerable readers made me aware of something strange. They made me look around and recognize fractals in the works of artists since time immemorial. I now collect such works. An extraordinary amount of arrogance is present in any claim of having been the first in "inventing" something. It's an arrogance that some enjoy, and others do not. Now I reach beyond arrogance when I proclaim that fractals had been pictured forever but their true role remained unrecognized and waited for me to be uncovered.

Andrew Biersack photo
Alfred Freddy Krupa photo
Virginia Woolf photo
Joseph Goebbels photo
Benjamin Disraeli photo
Neale Donald Walsch photo
Salman Rushdie photo
Virginia Woolf photo
David Wiesner photo

“Before they read words, children are reading pictures.”

David Wiesner (1956) American children's illustrator and writer

Source: Free Fall

Salvador Dalí photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Douglas Adams photo
Ansel Adams photo
Joseph Murphy photo
Walter Benjamin photo
Virginia Woolf photo
Ludwig Wittgenstein photo
Leonardo Da Vinci photo
Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo
Pablo Neruda photo
Nelson Algren photo
Ronald Reagan photo

“A picture is worth 1,000 denials.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)
Lewis Carroll photo

“And what is the use of a book, without pictures or conversation?”

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Nisargadatta Maharaj photo
Lewis Carroll photo
Claude Monet photo
Osama bin Laden photo
J.M.W. Turner photo

“He John Ruskin knows a great deal more about my pictures than I do; he puts things into my head, and points out meanings in them that I never intended.”

J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) British Romantic landscape painter, water-colourist, and printmaker

Quote of Turner, c. 1840's; as cited by George Walter Thornbury, in The life of J.M.W. Turner, Volume II; Hurst and Blackett Publishers, London, 1862, p. 130
Turner did not appear to be pleased with Mr. Ruskin's superlative eulogies, according to Peter Cunningham
1821 - 1851

Joschka Fischer photo

“I can already picture us sitting there with dreadlocks, smoking a huge joint, listening to reaggae-music and in front of us a steaming beer. Seriously: Can you imagine such a thing?”

Joschka Fischer (1948) German politician

Ich sehe uns schon mit Dreadlocks da sitzen und eine riesige Tüte rauchen, im Hintergrund Reggae-Music und vor uns ein dampfendes Bier. Im Ernst: Wie stellen Sie sich das vor?
After the 2005 Bundestags election discussion of the so-called Jamaica coalition.

Albert Schweitzer photo
Vladimir Nabokov photo

“Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss
Poems that take a thousand years to die
But ape the immortality of this
Red label on a little butterfly.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

"A Discovery" (December 1941); published as "On Discovering a Butterfly" in The New Yorker (15 May 1943); also in Nabokov's Butterflies: Unpublished and Uncollected Writings (2000) Edited and annotated by Brian Boyd and Robert Michael Pyle, p. 274.

Isaac Newton photo

“We must believe in one God that we may love & fear him. We must believe that he is the father Almighty, or first author of all things by the almighty power of his will, that we may thank & worship him & him alone for our being and for all the blessings of this life < insertion from f 43v > We must believe that this is the God of moses & the Jews who created heaven & earth & the sea & all things therein as is expressed in the ten commandments, that we may not take his name in vain nor worship images or visible resemblances nor have (in our worship) any other God then him. For he is without similitude he is the invisible God whom no eye hath seen nor can see, & therefore is not to be worshipped in any visible shape. He is the only invisible God & the only God whom we are to worship & therefore we are not to worship any visible image picture likeness or form. We are not forbidden to give the name of Gods to Angels & Kings but we are forbidden to worship them as Gods. For tho there be that are called Gods whether in heaven or in earth (as there are Gods many & Lords many) yet to us there is but one God the Father of whom are all things & we in him & our Lord Jesus Christ by whom are all things & we in him, that is, but one God & one Lord in our worship: One God & one mediator between God & man the man Christ Jesus. We are forbidden to worship two Gods but we are not forbidden to worship one God, & one Lord: one God for creating all things & one Lord for redeeming us with his blood. We must not pray to two Gods, but we may pray to one God in the name of one Lord. We must believe therefore in one Lord Jesus Christ that we may behave our selves obediently towards him as subjects & keep his laws, & give him that honour & glory & worship which is due to him as our Lord & King or else we are not his people. We must believe that this Lord Jesus is the Christ, or Messiah the Prince predicted by Daniel, & we must worship him as the Messiah or else we are no Christians. The Jews who were taught to have but one God were also taught to expect a king, & the Christians are taught in their Creed to have the same God & to believe that Jesus is that King.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Drafts on the history of the Church (Section 3). Yahuda Ms. 15.3, National Library of Israel, Jerusalem, Israel. 2006 Online Version at Newton Project http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00220

Titian photo
Emil Nolde photo

“Pictures are spiritual beings. The soul of the painter lives within them.”

Emil Nolde (1867–1956) German artist

from: Years of Struggle 1902-14' Autobiography Berlin 1934
1921 - 1956

Pablo Picasso photo

“I treat paintings as I treat objects. If a window in a picture looks wrong, I close it and draw the curtains, just as I would do in my own room.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Quote in "Picasso", Hans L. C. Jaffe, Thames and Hudson Ltd
Attributed from posthumous publications

Titian photo
William Moulton Marston photo

“A motion picture must be true to life. If a picture portrays a false emotion it trains people seeing it to react abnormally.”

William Moulton Marston (1893–1947) American psychologist, lawyer, inventor and comic book writer

Jill Lepore, The Secret History of Wonder Woman (2014), p. 136.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Kurt Vonnegut photo
Pablo Picasso photo
Hans Christian Andersen photo