Quotes about picture

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

Quotes about picture

“Struck intensely tonight by the thought that we live in a great age. We can make music, food, pictures, art, & love with unbelievable unprecedented freedom. It's all there, there for the taking & the making, all the time.”

Tom Hiddleston (1981) English actor, producer and musical performer

Love, Age, Food, Art

“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/

Smile, Hate, Feeling, Making love

“I can't change the fact that my paintings don't sell. But the time will come when people will recognize that they are worth more than the value of the paints used in the picture.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

People, Change, Time, Painting

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

Ahmed Omaar (1987)

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

“I do believe it is possible to create, even without ever writing a word or painting a picture, by simply molding one’s inner life. And that too is a deed.”

Etty Hillesum (1914–1943) Jewish diarist

Life, Painting

“Sometimes the soul takes pictures of things it has wished for, but never seen.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Soul

“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.

World, Smile

“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

Singing

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

Ahmed Omaar

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

Ahmed Omaar

“The entire universe is God's cosmic motion picture, and that individuals are merely actors in the divine play who change roles through reincarnation; mankind's deep suffering is rooted in identifying too closely with one's current role, rather than with the movie's director, or God.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

God, Suffering, Universe, Change

“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

Night

“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

God, Angels

“Music comes first; lyrics are secondary. Most of my lyrics are contradictions. I'll write a few sincere lines, and then I'll have to make fun of [them]. I don't like to make it too obvious, because if it is too obvious, it gets really stale. You shouldn't be in people's faces 100% all the time. We don't mean to be really cryptic or mysterious, but I just think that lyrics that are different and weird and spacey paint a nice picture. It's just the way I like art.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

Date unknown, but appears on Live! Tonight! Sold Out!!.
Interviews (1989-1994), Video

People, Art, Music, Way

“I’m without a teacher. My teacher… God has sent me teachers: the angel that stands by me, stands by me and directs me what to do. Time for me to paint a picture and I be tired I say I’m going to rest up for a couple of days. He won’t let me. Come down grab my feet and shake me. Beat me.”

Minnie Evans (1892–1987) American artist

Cited in Allie Light, Irving Saraf (1983), "The Angel That Stands By Me"

God, Angels, Teachers, Time

“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> <br class="br">From Poetry

Heart, Painting

“We artists are indestructible; even in a prison, or in a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art, even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell.”

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

World, Art, Painting

“If you don’t like seeing pictures of violence towards animals being posted, you need to help stop the violence, not the pictures.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Help, Animals

“To consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk.”

Edward Weston (1886–1958) American photographer

Law

“It is with the reading of books the same as with looking at pictures; one must, without doubt, without hesitations, with assurance, admire what is beautiful.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Books, Beauty, Reading

“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

Painting

“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

“It was all a dream, I used to read Word Up magazine. Salt-n-Peppa, Heavy D up in tha limousine. Hangin' pictures on my wall, every Saturday rap attack, Mr. Magic Marley Marl. I let my tape rock till my tape pop, smoking weed and bamboo, sippin' on Private Stock. Way back, when I had the red-and-black lumberjack, with the hat to match. Remember Rappin' Duke? Duh-ha duh-ha, you never thought that hip hop would take it this far. Now I'm in the limelight 'cause I rhyme tight. Time to get paid, blow up like the World Trade! Born sinner, the opposite of a winner. Remember when I used to eat sardines for dinner.”

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

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

World, Dreams, Way, Time

“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"

Dead

“Am I in the picture? Am I getting in or out of it? I could be a ghost, an animal or a dead body, not just this girl standing on the corner…?”

Francesca Woodman (1958–1981) American photographer

Girl, Animals, Dead

“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

Leadership, People, Secret, Future

“Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel…the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

Women, World, Feeling, Thinking

“All life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Life, Dreams

“Pictures must be miraculous.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

“Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty if only we have the eyes to see them.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Beauty, Nature, Painting

“Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.”

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

Painting

“Picture the moment when your mom and dad first saw you as something other than a pretty, tiny version of them. You as them, but improved. Better educated. Innocent. Then picture when you stopped being their dream.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Rant

Source: Rant

Education, Dreams, Moms

“If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. If He had a wallet, your photo would be in it. He sends you flowers every spring and a sunrise every morning… Face it, friend. He is crazy about you!”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

God, Photo, Spring, Flowers

“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

World, Sense, Painting

“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.

“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)

Love, Time

“I often liken the process of physics research to solving a jigsaw puzzle. As we put together pieces to form patches, a certain image of the overall picture emerges, but until the game is sufficiently progressed, we are not quite sure. I feel much the same way about the wealth of signs for new particles. We have patches that have been put together, but we are not quite sure how all pieces will fit together into a coherent whole. There are also certain pieces which do not seem to fit into any patches at all. For the most part, the experimental findings have not been completely unexpected, but there have been certain surprises that I, for one, had not foreseen. This is what makes particle physics exciting and tantalizing. At moments of despair and frustration, I feel as though somebody has scrambled two boxes of jigsaw puzzles for me to put together.”

Benjamin W. Lee (1935–1977) Korean American physicist

about his work as a particle physicist, at the Fermilab History and Archives Project: Benjamin Lee comments on HEP discoveries http://history.fnal.gov/significant_staff.html#Benjamin_Lee (May, 1976).

Way, Feeling, Game, Parting

“Traditionally, art has been for the select few. We have been brainwashed to believe that Michaelangelo had to pat you on the head at birth. Well, we show people that anybody can paint a picture that they're proud of. It may never hang in the Smithsonian, but it will certainly be something that they'll hang in their home and be proud of. And that's what it's all about.”

Bob Ross (1942–1995) American painter, art instructor, and television host

Linda Shrieves (July 7, 1990) "Bob Ross Uses His Brush to Spread Paint and Joy", The Orlando Sentinel, p. E1.

People, Art, Home, Birth

“When you wish to see whether the general effect of your picture corresponds with that of the object represented after nature, take a mirror and set it so that it reflects the actual thing, and then compare the reflection with your picture, and consider carefully whether the subject of the two images is in conformity with both, studying especially the mirror. The mirror ought to be taken as a guide… you see the picture made upon one plane showing things which appear in relief, and the mirror upon one plane does the same. The picture is on one single surface, and the mirror is the same. …if you but know well how to compose your picture it will also seem a natural thing seen in a great mirror.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XXIX Precepts of the Painter

Nature, Study, Appearance

“Our eyes are always flashing sudden flicks of different pictures to our brains, yet none of that saccadic action leads to any sense of change or motion in the world; each thing reposes calmly in its "place!"”

Marvin Minsky (1927–2016) American cognitive scientist

...What makes us such innate Copernicans?
Music, Mind, and Meaning (1981)

World, Sense, Change

“If the development by the enemy as well as by us of thermonuclear weapons could have been averted, I think we would be in a somewhat safer world today than we are…I do not think we want to argue technical questions here, and I do not think it is very meaningful for me to speculate as to how we would have responded had the technical picture at that time been more as it was later.
However, it is my judgment in these things that when you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb. I do not think anybody opposed making it; there were some debates about what to do with it after it was made. I cannot very well imagine if we had known in late 1949 what we got to know by early 1951 that the tone of our report would have been the same.”

Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) American theoretical physicist and professor of physics

Oppenheimer testifying in his defense in his 1954 security hearings, discussing the American reaction to the first successful Russian test of an atomic bomb and the debate whether to develop the "super" hydrogen bombs with vastly higher explosive power; from volume II of the Oppenheimer hearing transcripts http://www.osti.gov/includes/opennet/includes/Oppenheimer%20hearings/Vol%20II%20Oppenheimer.pdf, pg 95/266 (emphasis added)

World, Way, Imagination, Question

“Two artists can suggest two different subject matters and two completely different pictures by using the same spot. Every picture demonstrates certain aspects from the inner life of the painter who made it. For this reason, the orthodox Tachist is wary of letting himself be influenced by Leonardo's famous wall... I grant the painter the right to speak, to laugh, to take a stand and to draw upon all his hallucinatory faculties. But I absolutely refuse to live like a Tachist.”

Max Ernst (1891–1976) German painter, sculptor and graphic artist

Quote from 'Max Ernst im Gesprach mit Eduard Roditi' (1967), as cited in Max Ernst, Écritures Paris, 1970, p. 416
1951 - 1976

Life, Drawing

“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

Hate, War, World

“Since I think just in pictures it's sort of hard to think about abstract concepts so I have to have visual images like for example when I was a child I didn't really understand some of the stuff in the Lord's Prayer and y'know when it talks about "the power and the glory"… and I thought "electrical high tension lines, circular rainbow." "Thou art in Heaven"; that didn't make any sense to me but another autistic person says "Well I always pictured God up in Heaven with an easel."”

Temple Grandin (1947) USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist

First Person (TV series) Episode 1 "Stairway to Heaven" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Person_(TV_series)#Season_1

God, Art, Understanding, Thinking

“94. I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book On Certainty

On Certainty (1969)

World, Falseness

“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.

Waiting

“As we grow up we learn that even the person that wasn't supposed to ever let
you down probably will. You will have your heart broken probably more than once
and it gets harder every time. You'll break hearts too, so remember how it felt
when yours was broken. You'll fight with your best friend. You'll blame a new
love for things an old one did. You'll cry because time is passing too fast, and
you'll eventually lose someone you love, so take many pictures, laugh too much
and love like you've never been hurt because every sixty seconds you spend upset is one minute of happiness you'll never get back.”

Andrew Biersack (1990) American singer-songwriter

Hurt, Time, Personality, Heart

“I think success is when you are confronted with utter defeat of your world, your intimacy, your ideas, your public picture, your heritage, your previous achievements. When in one moment it looks like there is one, and nothing that helps you. When almost every look is also a look of doubt, when you yourself put everything under the question mark. When all the illusions about yourself fall, illusions about your surroundings, about people, about faith and religion, about flags, about objects of love and how much are you in love…and then, in that moment of personal and private holocaust, of that ocean of pain looking like all inner strength faded away, and there is no right for excuses about your existence. When at that moment you rise and keep moving forward, you start and you lead a creative and productive life. Yes, I think that is objective strength and power.”

Alfred Freddy Krupa (1971) Croatian contemporary painter, master draughtsman, book artist and art teacher, the pioneer of the New Ink Art m…

Overcoming a Personal Holocaust, Alfred Freddy Krupa (in the article by Ante Vranković), Life As A Human (Canada), 2019
2010s

Faith, Religion, Pain, Success

“Was there no sword, nothing with which to batter down these walls, this protection, this begetting of children and living behind curtains, and becoming daily more involved and committed, with books and pictures? Better burn one’s life out like Louis, desiring perfection; or like Rhoda leave us, flying past us to the desert; or choose one out of millions and one only like Neville; better be like Susan and love and hate the heat of the sun or the frost-bitten grass; or be like Jinny, honest, an animal. All had their rapture; their common feeling with death; something that stood them in stead. Thus I visited each of my friends in turn, trying, with fumbling fingers, to prise open their locked caskets. I went from one to the other holding my sorrow — no, not my sorrow but the incomprehensible nature of this our life — for their inspection. Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends, I to my own heart, I to seek among phrases and fragments something unbroken — I to whom there is not beauty enough in moon or tree; to whom the touch of one person with another is all, yet who cannot grasp even that, who am so imperfect, so weak, so unspeakably lonely. There I sat.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Bernard, section IX
The Waves (1931)

Tree, Hate, Making love, Sun

“The Jew is uncreative. He produces nothing, he only haggles with products. With rags, clothing, pictures, jewels, grain, stocks, cures, peoples and states. He has somehow stolen everything he deals in. When he attacks a state he is a revolutionary. As soon as he holds power, he preaches peace and order so that he can devour his conquests in comfort.”

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

1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)

Clothes, People, Peace

“Verona is full of pictures which have never been painted. Every step excites emotion and gives rise to unaffected reflection. In the course of a short stroll, you may pass by a Roman amphitheatre, still used, then the castle of some petty prince of the Middle Ages, and while you are contrasting the sublime elevation of antiquity with the heterogeneous palace of a Scaliger your eyes light on a gate of Oriental appearance and fantastic ornament... The illusion is perfect, the eye rests with pain on the passing citizens in their modern costumes; you look for black velvets and gold chains, white feathers and red stockings.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Letter to Isaac Disraeli (September 1826), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (1929), p. 107

Painting, Perfection, Pain, Light

“Explore Nature. Go for a walk in nature. Collect leaves and flowers from your walk. Look at pictures of things, from nature, which move you. Spend time tumbling and playing with a pet. Listen to music with nature sounds. Help your child understand that since ALL comes from God and ALL is God, interacting with nature is a way of communicating with and hearing God.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

God, Communication, Flowers, Time

“Music, love, death. Certainly a triangle of sorts; maybe even an eternal one.

"The only people who can see the whole picture," he murmured, "are the ones who step out of the frame." (The ground beneath her feet.)”

Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist

Love, Death, People, Music

“Every face, every shop, bedroom window, public-house, and dark square is a picture feverishly turned--in search of what? It is the same with books. What do we seek through millions of pages?”

Virginia Woolf book Jacob's Room

Source: Jacob's Room

Books, Search, Housing

“The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words.”

Elliott Erwitt (1928) American photographer

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

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

Source: Free Fall

Children, Reading

“The reason some portraits don't look true to life is that some people make no effort to resemble their pictures.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Life, People, Effort

“Loser loser
Double loser
whatever
as if
get the picture
DUH!”

Lisi Harrison (1970) Canadian writer

“For me, the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture.”

Diane Arbus (1923–1971) American photographer and author

“The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.”

P. C. Cast book Betrayed

Source: Betrayed

Beauty, Beauty, Parting

“How do you make your pictures?
— I don’t know, it’s not important.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) French photographer

“The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.”

Terry Pratchett book Moving Pictures

Source: Moving Pictures

Life

“If somebody thinks they're a hedgehog, presumably you just give 'em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Thinking

“You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.”

Ansel Adams (1902–1984) American photographer and environmentalist

Love, People, Books, Music

“There are no bad pictures; that's just how your face looks sometimes.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

“Your desire is your prayer. Picture the fulfillment of your desire now and feel its reality and you will experience the joy of the answered.
Dr. Joseph Murphy”

Joseph Murphy (1898–1981) American writer

Feeling, Reality, Joy

“When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.”

Robert Frank (1924–2019) American photographer and filmmaker

People, Way, Feeling, Reading

“A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”

Walter Benjamin book Theses on the Philosophy of History

Source: Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), IX

Angels, History, Past, Future

“I feel so intensely the delights of shutting oneself up in a little world of one’s own, with pictures and music and everything beautiful.”

Virginia Woolf book The Voyage Out

Source: The Voyage Out

World, Beauty, Music, Feeling

“A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Philosophical Investigations

Source: Philosophical Investigations

“The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

“I sit, I read, I listen to music, I go or a walk, I ride to Prospect Park and sit under the Willow Tree, I remember, I forget, I look at pictures, I do, I do, I do… or I don't, but its peaceful… only me… no worries.”

Hubert Selby Jr. (1928–2004) American writer

Peace, Music, Tree, Reading

“Nothing is fair. The most one can hope is for things to be logical. Justice is a rare illness in a world that is otherwise a picture of health.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

Health, World, Justice, Hope

“Absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through its walls and hang pictures on the air.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Housing

“The holy grail is to spend less time making the picture than it takes people to look at it.”

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

People, Time

“We're so special, when you look in the dictionary under short bus, there's a group picture of us,'' Stevie Rae said, sounding weak but definately alive.”

Kristin Cast book Untamed

Source: Untamed

“The face is a picture of the mind with the eyes as its interpreter.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

“The most essential and fundamental aspect of culture is the study of literature, since this is an education in how to picture and understand human situations.”

Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) British writer and philosopher

Education, Literature, Understanding, Study

“I'm not against sentimentality. I think you need it. I mean, I don't think you get a true picture of people without it in writing… It's a kind of poetry, it's an emotional poetry, and, to bring it back to the literary scene, I don't think anything is true that doesn't have it, that doesn't have poetry in it.”

Nelson Algren (1909–1981) American novelist, short story writer

People, Thinking

“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)

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

Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Books

“(…) if you can change yourself you will find that no other change is needed. To change the picture you merely change the film, you do not attack the cinema screen! (…) Clarify your mind, purify your heart, sanctify your life – this is the quickest way to a change of your world.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Change
Source: I am That, P.129.

Life, World, Way, Change

“p>Finally my Hiawatha
Tumbled all the tribe together,
('Grouped' is not the right expression),
And, as happy chance would have it
Did at last obtain a picture
Where the faces all succeeded:
Each came out a perfect likeness.Then they joined and all abused it,
Unrestrainedly abused it,
As the worst and ugliest picture
They could possibly have dreamed of.
'Giving one such strange expressions -
Sullen, stupid, pert expressions.
Really any one would take us
(Any one that did not know us)
For the most unpleasant people!”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

(Hiawatha seemed to think so,
Seemed to think it not unlikely.)</p>
Hiawatha's Photographing
Rhyme? and Reason? (1883)

People, Stupidity, Dreams, Thinking

“I'm very sorry to inconvenience you [ the art dealers G. and J. Berheim-Jeune ], but I find it impossible to supply you with any more Venice pictures. It was useless trying to persuade my self otherwise, the work that's left is too poor for exhibition. Don't insist... I've enough good sense in me to know whether what I'm doing is good or bad, and it' utterly bad, and I can't believe that people of taste, if they have any knowledge at all, could see any value in it. Things have been dragging on like this for far too long..”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

Quote in Monet's letter to his art-dealers [[wBernheim-Jeune|G. and J. Berheim-Jeune], Venice, 1912; as cited in: K.E. Sullivan. Monet: Discovering Art, Brockhampton press, London (2004), p. 72
1900 - 1920

People, Art, Knowledge, Sense

“It should not be hidden from you that the people of Islam had suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist-Crusaders alliance and their collaborators; to the extent that the Muslims blood became the cheapest and their wealth as loot in the hands of the enemies. Their blood was spilled in Palestine and Iraq. The horrifying pictures of the massacre of Qana, in Lebanon are still fresh in our memory. Massacres in Tajikistan, Burma, Kashmir, Assam, Philippines, Pattani, Ogaden, Somalia, Eritrea, Chechnya, and in Bosnia-Herzegovina took place, massacres that send shivers in the body and shake the conscience. All of this and the world watch and hear, and not only didn't respond to these atrocities, but also with a clear conspiracy between the USA and its' allies and under the cover of the iniquitous United Nations, the dispossessed people were even prevented from obtaining arms to defend themselves. The people of Islam awakened and realized that they are the main target for the aggression of the Zionist-Crusaders alliance. All false claims and propaganda about "Human Rights" were hammered down and exposed by the massacres that took place against the Muslims in every part of the world.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

1990s, Declaration of War against the Americans (1996)

People, World, Suffering, Memory

“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

“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.

Music, Imagination, Beer

“The man who dares to live his life with death before his eyes, the man who receives life back bit by bit and lives as though it did not belong to him by right but has been bestowed on him as a gift, the man who has such freedom and peace of mind that he has overcome death in his thoughts — such man believes in eternal life because it is already his, it is a present experience, and he already benefits from its peace and joy. He cannot describe this experience in words. He may not be able to conform his view with the traditional picture of it. But one thing he knows for certain: Something within us does not pass away, something goes on living and working wherever the kingdom of the spirit is present. It is already working and living within us, because in our hearts we have been able to reach life by overcoming death.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Reverence for Life (1969)

Life, Death, Peace, Freedom

“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.

Kiss

“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

Love, Life, God, People

“Most Illustrious Lord and My Lord, I received the other day, with due reverence your Lordship's letter, together with the canvas and framing. Having read and noted the contents, I considered them so pretty and ingenious as to require no improvement of any kind; and the more I thought over it the more I became convinced that the greatness of art amongst the ancients was due to the assistance they received from great princes content to leave to the painters the credit and renown derived from their own ingenuity in bespeaking pictures. Can I therefore doubt that, if God enables me to satisfy in any part the wishes of Your Lordship, I shall have all credit for my labour? Yet I shall, after all have done no more than give shape to that which received its spirit — the most essential part — from Your Excellency.”

Titian (1488–1576) Italian painter

In a letter to the Duke Alfonso of Ferrara, From Venice, April 1, 1518; as quoted by J.A.Y. Crowe & G.B. Cavalcaselle in Titian his life and times - With some account ..., publisher John Murray, London, 1877, p. 181-82
1510-1540

God, Art, Reading, Parting

“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

Soul

“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

Drawing, Painting

“His Majesty [emperor Charles V], [in his court in Augsburg] sent for me. After the usual courtesies and examination of the pictures which I have brought, he asked for news of you.... I replied that at Venice, in Rome and in all Italy the public assumed that his Holiness [the new Pope], was well minded to make you.. [Cardinal] upon which Caesar [= Charles V] showed signs of pleasure in his face, saying he would greatly rejoice at such an event, which could not fail to please you, and so, dear brother [= close friend], I have done for you such service as I owe to a friend of your standing.... not a day passes but the Duke of Alva speaks to me of the 'divine Aretini', because he loves you so much..”

Titian (1488–1576) Italian painter

Quote in Titian's letter to his friend Pietro Aretino in Venice, sent from Augsburg, 11 Nov. 1550, the original is in Lettere a P. Aretino' u.s. i. p. 147; as cited in Titian: his life and times - With some account of his family... Vol. 2. J. A. Crowe & G.B. Cavalcaselle, Publisher London, John Murray, 1877, p. 198
1541-1576

Love, Pleasure