Quotes about style
page 8

Patrick White photo
Common (rapper) photo
Ben Croshaw photo
Rousas John Rushdoony photo
Georg Brandes photo
Paul Gauguin photo

“Many people say that I don't know how to draw because I don't draw particular forms. When will they understand that execution, drawing and color (in other words, style) must be in harmony with the poem?”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

in a letter to Charles Morice (July 1901), from French Paintings and Painters from the Fourteenth Century to Post-Impressionism, ed. Gerd Muesham [Frederick Ungar, 1970, ISBN 0-8044-6521-5], p. 551
1890s - 1910s

Lytton Strachey photo

“His style is perfect joy, and it is only when one has come across a fairer and kindlier handling of one of his victims that one is resentful of his tittering.”

Lytton Strachey (1880–1932) British writer

George Lyttelton, letter to Rupert Hart-Davis, October 23, 1957, in The Lyttelton Hart-Davis Letters Vols. 1 & 2 (1985) p. 374. ISBN 0719542464.
Criticism

Camille Paglia photo

“Oil painting and color, said Michelangelo, are for “women and the lazy.” His sharp-edged Apollonian style is the only way to beat back mother nature.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 158

Frederick Rolfe photo
Paul Klee photo

“He [in general] has found his style, when he cannot do otherwise, i. e., cannot do something else.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Diary entry (Munich, 1908), # 825, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918; University of California Press, 1968, p. 227
1903 - 1910

Jack Vance photo
Andrew Sega photo
Gerhard Richter photo
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo
M. Balamuralikrishna photo
Mani Madhava Chakyar photo

“On the Indian front, [the Hindutva movement] should spearhead the revival, rejuvenation and resurgence of Hinduism, which includes not only religious, spiritual and cultural practices springing from Vedic or Sanskritic sources, but from all other Indian sources independently of these: the practices of the Andaman islanders and the (pre-Christian) Nagas are as Hindu in the territorial sense, and Sanâtana in the spiritual sense, as classical Sanskritic Hinduism. (…) A true Hindutvavadi should feel a pang of pain, and a desire to take positive action, not only when he hears that the percentage of Hindus in the Indian population is falling due to a coordination of various factors, or that Hindus are being discriminated against in almost every respect, but also when he hears that the Andamanese races and languages are becoming extinct; that vast tracts of forests, millions of years old, are being wiped out forever; that ancient and mediaeval Hindu architectural monuments are being vandalised, looted or fatally neglected; that priceless ancient documents are being destroyed or left to rot and decay; that innumerable forms of arts and handicrafts, architectural styles, plant and animal species, musical forms and musical instruments, etc. are becoming extinct; that our sacred rivers and environment are being irreversibly polluted and destroyed…”

Shrikant Talageri (1958) Indian author

Talageri in S.R. Goel (ed.): Time for Stock-Taking, p.227-228.

Laraine Day photo
Amir Taheri photo
Robert Patrick (playwright) photo
Susan Sontag photo
Andrew Gelman photo
Daniel Goleman photo
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick photo
Billy Joel photo
Vyjayanthimala photo
Camille Pissarro photo

“[Seurat's pointilist style] Inhibits me and hinders the development of spontaneity of sensation.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

quote, c. 1888; as quoted in: Arts and Activities. Vol. 81-82, (1977), p. cxxxvii
http://www.artnet.com/auction-houses/lesliehindman-auctioneers/artist-camille-pissarro/
1880's

Henry Moore photo
Dana Gioia photo
Roger Ebert photo
Tom Ford photo
Anthony Burgess photo
Psy photo

“Song "Gangnam Style" (July 2012)”

Psy (1977) South Korean singer

Gabriele Münter photo
Andy Warhol photo
Stendhal photo

“It is the nobility of their style which will make our writers of 1840 unreadable forty years from now.”

Stendhal (1783–1842) French writer

Ce sera la noblesse de leur style qui, dans quarante ans, rendra illisibles nos écrivains de 1840.
Marginalia note, first edition of La Chartreuse de Parme (1840)

Ilana Mercer photo
Albrecht Thaer photo
Paul Karl Feyerabend photo
Philip Schaff photo

“The Pre-Lutheran German Bible. The precise origin of the mediaeval German Bible is still unknown. Dr. Ludwig Keller of Münster first suggested in his Die Reformation und die älteren Reformparteien, Leipzig, 1885, pp. 257-260, the hypothesis that it was made by Waldenses (who had also a Romanic version); and he tried to prove it in his Die Waldenser und die deutschen Bibelübersetzungen, Leipzig, 1886 (189 pages). Dr. Hermann Haupt, of Würzburg, took the same ground in his Die deutsche Bibelübersetzung der mittelalterlichen Waldenser in dem Codex Teplensis und der ersten gedruckten Bibel nachgewiesen, Würzburg, 1885 (64 pages); and again, in self-defense against Jostes, in Der waldensische Ursprung des Codex Teplensis und der vor-lutherischen deutschen Bibeldrucke, Würzburg, 1886. On the other hand, Dr. Franz Jostes, a Roman Catholic scholar, denied the Waldensian and defended the Catholic origin of that translation, in two pamphlets: Die Waldenser und die vorlutherische Bibelübersetzung, Münster, 1885 (44 pages), and Die Tepler Bibelübersetzung. Eine zweite Kritik, Münster, 1886 (43 pages). The same author promises a complete history of German Catholic Bible versions.
The hostility of several Popes and Councils to the circulation of vernacular translations of the Bible implies the existence of such translations, and could not prevent their publication, as the numerous German editions prove. Dutch, French, and Italian versions also appeared among the earliest prints. See Stevens, Nos. 687 and 688 (p. 59 sq.). The Italian edition exhibited in 1877 at London is entitled: La Biblia en lingua Volgare (per Nicolo di Mallermi). Venetia: per Joan. Rosso Vercellese, 1487, fol. A Spanish Bible by Bonif. Ferrer was printed at Valencia, 1478 (see Reuss, Gesch. der heil. Schr. N. T., II. 207, 5th Ed.).
The Bible is the common property and most sacred treasure of all Christian churches. The art of printing was invented in Catholic times, and its history goes hand in hand with the history of the Bible. Henry Stevens says (The Bibles in the Caxton Exhibition, p. 25): ""The secular history of the Holy Scriptures is the sacred history of Printing. The Bible was the first book printed, and the Bible is the last book printed. Between 1450 and 1877, an interval of four centuries and a quarter, the Bible shows the progress and comparative development of the art of printing in a manner that no other single book can; and Biblical bibliography proves that during the first forty years, at least, the Bible exceeded in amount of printing all other books put together; nor were its quality, style, and variety a whit behind its quantity.""”

Philip Schaff (1819–1893) American Calvinist theologian

Roman Catholic rival German versions of the Bible

Roméo Dallaire photo
Peter Sloterdijk photo
Cyril Connolly photo
Hayley Jensen photo
Georges Braque photo

“One must beware of a formula good for everything, that will serve to interpret the other arts as well as reality, and that instead of creating will only produce a style, or rather a stylization.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1908 - 1920, quotes from Artists on Art...(1972), p. 422 - Braque's quote, Paris 1917

Christopher Nolan photo
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey photo

“Surrey, for his justness of thought, correctness of style, and purity of expression, may justly be pronounced the first English classical poet.”

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516–1547) English Earl

Thomas Warton The History of English Poetry (1774-81) vol. 3, p. 27.
Criticism

Rudy Vallée photo
Mao Zedong photo

“The country is so beautiful, where so many heroes had devoted their lives into it. Sorry that the Qin Emperor or the Han Wu Emperor lacks a sense for literacy; while the founders of the Tang and Song dynasties came short in style. The great man, Genghis Khan, only knew how to shoot eagles with an arrow. The past is past. To see real heroes, look around you.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Qinyuanchun ["Snow"] (沁园春•雪) (1936; first published in late 1945). Variant translation of the last stanza: "All are past and gone! / For truly great men / Look to this age alone."

Joseph Martin Kraus photo

“The man has a great style!”

Joseph Martin Kraus (1756–1792) German composer

Christoph Willibald Gluck

Brigham Young photo
Elizabeth May photo

“The increasing prominence of a presidential-style prime minister is steadily denigrating the traditions and institutions of Canadian democracy.”

Elizabeth May (1954) Canadian politician

Introduction, p. 8
Losing Confidence - Power, politics, And The Crisis In Canadian Democracy (2009)

Sidney Lanier photo

“Daring with my poem 'Special Pleading' to give myself such freedom as I desired, in my own style”

Sidney Lanier (1842–1881) American musician, poet

From Memorial by William Hayes Ward to The Poems of Sidney Lanier (ed. Mary D Lanier)

Jane Austen photo
David Bomberg photo

“Style is ephemeral – Form is eternal”

David Bomberg (1890–1957) painter

"The Bomberg Papers", An Anthology From X (Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 90.

Aldous Huxley photo

“We may not appreciate the fact; but a fact nevertheless it remains: we are living in a Golden Age, the most gilded Golden Age of human history — not only of past history, but of future history. For, as Sir Charles Darwin and many others before him have pointed out, we are living like drunken sailors, like the irresponsible heirs of a millionaire uncle. At an ever accelerating rate we are now squandering the capital of metallic ores and fossil fuels accumulated in the earth’s crust during hundreds of millions of years. How long can this spending spree go on? Estimates vary. But all are agreed that within a few centuries or at most a few millennia, Man will have run through his capital and will be compelled to live, for the remaining nine thousand nine hundred and seventy or eighty centuries of his career as Homo sapiens, strictly on income. Sir Charles is of the opinion that Man will successfully make the transition from rich ores to poor ores and even sea water, from coal, oil, uranium and thorium to solar energy and alcohol derived from plants. About as much energy as is now available can be derived from the new sources — but with a far greater expense in man hours, a much larger capital investment in machinery. And the same holds true of the raw materials on which industrial civilization depends. By doing a great deal more work than they are doing now, men will contrive to extract the diluted dregs of the planet’s metallic wealth or will fabricate non-metallic substitutes for the elements they have completely used up. In such an event, some human beings will still live fairly well, but not in the style to which we, the squanderers of planetary capital, are accustomed.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

"Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" in Adonis and the Alphabet (1956); later in Collected Essays (1959), p. 293

Javad Alizadeh photo
Sinclair Lewis photo

“The musical language which made the classical style possible is that of tonality, which was not a massive, immobile system but a living, gradually changing language from its beginning. It had reached a new and important turning point just before the style of Haydn and Mozart took shape.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Part I. Introduction. 1. The Musical Language of the Late Eighteenth Century
Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (Expanded edition, 1997)

Will Eisner photo

“In 1848, driven by a revolution in Paris, King Louis Philippe abdicated and Louis Napoleon (a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte) was elected president of France. Four years later, after a coup d’etat, Louis Napoleon styled himself Napoleon II, emperor of France.
napoleon III’s first act as emperor was to imprison his political opponents. He was a crafty monarch, and his ambition during his reign was to seek glory through military adventurism while the great mass of French peasants remained ina state of poverty and despair.
Initially, Napoleon III achieved a short-lived public popularity by trying to “modernize” France and liberalize its economy, but his legacy remains that of a dictator and conniving politician.
In 1870, fearful that Germany was expanding too fast, Napoleon III declared war against this neighbor. The French were quickly defeated, and Napoleon III became a prisoner of war. Upon release in 1871, he was exiled to England, where he lived until his death in 1873.
Maurice Joly was mindful of this growing tension between Germany and France. He had been born in 1821 of French parents. He was admitted to the Paris bar as an attorney and was a one-time member of the General Assembly. Joly devoted most of time to writing caustic essays on French politics. He joined many other severe critics of Napoleon III, who regarded him as a ruthless despot.
In 1864, Joly wrote a book called “The Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu.”…It intended to liken Napoleon III to the infamous Machiavelli, author of “The Prince,” a treatise on the acquisition of power. Holy intended to reveal the French dictator’s dark and evil plans.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Will Eisner, pp. 7-8
The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Haruki Murakami photo
Erich Heckel photo

“How glad I was to paint that for the soldiers it is very beautiful, how much respect and even love for art there is in human beings, in spite of everything, and who would have thought that my style, which seemed so modern and incomprehensible to critics and public at rotten exhibitions in the cities, would now be able to speak and convey something to men to whom I make a gift of it.”

Erich Heckel (1883–1970) German artist

In a letter to de:Gustave Schiefler, from Flanders, at Christmas 1915; as quoted by de:Wolf-Dieter Dube, in Expressionism, de:Wolf-Dieter Dube; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 62
Heckel wrote Schiefler about his 'Madonna'-painting, he painted in Ostende, Flander in 1915. Heckel was a medical orderly in Flanders together with Max Beckmann, in World War 1. Both artists got a lot of free time in the army for their artistic activities. The 'Madonna' got destroyed in World War 2. https://www.bildindex.de/document/obj00001491

William Luther Pierce photo
E. M. S. Namboodiripad photo
Michael Crichton photo
James Wan photo
E.M. Forster photo

“Hardship is vanishing, but so is style, and the two are more closely connected than the present generation supposes.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

"Cambridge"
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)

George Washington Plunkitt photo

“Putin’ on style don’t pay in politics. p. 50”

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 12, Dangers of the Dress Suit in Politics

Francis Parkman photo
Roy Lichtenstein photo
Henryk Sienkiewicz photo
Louise Burfitt-Dons photo

“The style of kindness has changed.”

Louise Burfitt-Dons (1953) Activist, writer, blogger

Speech to World Kindness Movement (November 2007)

Pierre Hadot photo

“Almost all great painters in old age arrive at the same kind of broad, simplified style, as if they wanted to summarise the whole of their experience in a few strokes and blobs of colour.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: The Romantic Rebellion (1973), Ch. 13: Degas

Benjamin Spock photo

“I would say that the surest measure of a man's or a woman's maturity is the harmony, style, joy, and dignity he creates in his marriage, and the pleasure and inspiration he provides for his spouse.”

Benjamin Spock (1903–1998) American pediatrician and author of Baby and Child Care

Quoted in Older & Wiser Edited by G. B. Dianda and B. J. Hofmayer (1995)

Phil Brooks photo

“Isn't this the prettiest little thing you've ever seen? It was over a year ago I held this belt high in the air after I fought for it for the first time in Dayton, Ohio against Samoa Joe and I proclaimed this belt the most important thing to me. Right now, in my hands, as of this day 6/18/05, THIS becomes the most important belt in the world! This belt in the hands of any other man is just a belt, but in my hands it becomes power. Just like this microphone in the hands of any of the boys in the back is just a microphone, but in the hands of a dangerous man like myself it becomes a pipe-bomb. These words that I speak spoken by anybody else are just words strung loosely together to form sentences. What I say I mean, and what I mean I say, and they become anthems! You see, if I could be afforded the time here a little bit of a story. There was once an old man, walking home from work. He was walking in the snow, and he stumbled upon a snake frozen in the ice. He took that snake, and he brought it home, and he took care of it, and he thawed it out, and he nursed it back to health. And as soon as that snake was well enough, it bit the old man. And as the old man lay there dying he asked the snake, 'Why? I took care of you. I loved you. I saved your life.' And that snake looked that man right in the eye and said, 'You stupid old man. I'm a snake.' The greatest thing the devil ever did was make you people believe he didn't exist… and you're looking at him right now! I AM THE DEVIL HIMSELF! And all of you stupid, mindless people fell for it! You all believed in the same make-believe superhero that the legendary Ricky 'The Dragon' Steamboat saw some year ago today. No, you see, you don't know anything. You followed me hook-line and sinker, all of you did, and I'm not mad at you… I just feel sorry for you. This belongs to me! Everything you see here belongs to me, and I did what I had to do to get my hands on this. Now I am the GREATEST PRO WRESTLER walkin' the Earth today! This is my stage, this is my theater, you are my puppets! When I pulled those marionette strings, and I moved your emotions, and I played with them, and honestly it's 'cause I get off on it. I hate each and every single one of you with a thousand burns and I will not stop… I will not stop until I prove that I am better than you, that I am better than Low Ki, that I am better than AJ Styles! I'm better than Samoa Joe. Ladies and gentlemen, the champ is here! You don't have to love it, but you better learn to accept it. 'Cause I'm taking this with me, and there's not a single person in that locker room that can stop me!”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

Ring of Honor, Death Before Dishonor III. June 18th, 2005.
This promo took place directly after Punk defeated Austin Aries for the ROH World Championship proceeding to turn the, at the time face, Punk heel. Directly after this promo Christopher Daniels made his first appearance in ROH in over a year to challenge for the belt. This promo also made reference to an old parable http://www.snopes.com/critters/malice/scorpion.htm about an animal doing an act of kindness to another creature that is venomous and being surprised when the animal injects the venom to the creature after the act of kindness who then proceeds to explain it is their nature to perform the act.
Ring of Honor

Margaret Thatcher photo
David Brin photo

“One great mystery is why sexual reproduction became dominant for higher life-forms. Optimization theory says it should be otherwise.
Take a fish or lizard, ideally suited to her environment, with just the right internal chemistry, agility, camouflage—whatever it takes to be healthy, fecund, and successful in her world. Despite all this, she cannot pass on her perfect characteristics. After sex, her offspring will be jumbles, getting only half of their program from her and half their re-sorted genes somewhere else.
Sex inevitably ruins perfection. Parthenogenesis would seem to work better—at least theoretically. In simple, static environments, well-adapted lizards who produce duplicate daughters are known to have advantages over those using sex.
Yet, few complex animals are known to perform self-cloning. And those species exist in ancient, stable deserts, always in close company with a related sexual species.
Sex has flourished because environments are seldom static. Climate, competition, parasites—all make for shifting conditions. What was ideal in one generation may be fatal the next. With variability, your offspring get a fighting chance. Even in desperate times, one or more of them may have what it takes to meet new challenges and thrive.
Each style has its advantages, then. Cloning offers stability and preservation of excellence. Sex gives adaptability to changing times. In nature it is usually one or the other. Only lowly creatures such as aphids have the option of switching back and forth.”

Introduction to Chapter 8 (pp. 123-124)
Glory Season (1993)

Robert Denning photo

“A la Rothschild, a style I define as many good things used irreverently.”

Robert Denning (1927–2005) American interior designer

Aileen Mehle, "Manhattan Grand Luxe — Richly Appointed Rooms For Collectors", Architectural Digest (September 1994), v. 51 #9, pp. 126-176.

Gottfried von Straßburg photo

“If one cannot overlook a hurt, many hurts will grow from it. It is a fatal style of living.”

Swer keinen schaden vertragen kan,
dâ wahsent dicke schaden an.
und ist ein veiclîcher site.
Source: Tristan, Line 281

Kazimir Malevich photo

“Painting has turned back from the non-objective way to the object, and the development of painting has returned to the figurative part of the way that had led to the destruction of the object. But on the way back, painting came across a new object that the proletarian revolution had brought to the fore and which had to be given form, which means that it had to be raised to the level of a work of art... I am utterly convinced that if you keep to the way of Constructivism, where you are now firmly stuck, which raises not one artistic issue except for pure utilitarianism and in theater simple agitation, which may be one hundred percent consistent ideologically but is completely castrated as regards artistic problems, and forfeits half its value... If you go on as you are.... then Stanislavski will emerge as the winner in the theater and the old forms will survive. And as to architecture, if the architects do not produce artistic architecture, the Greco-Roman style of Zyeltovski will prevail, together with the Repin style in painting..”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

Quote of Malevich from his letter 8 April 1932, to Meyerhold, in 'Two Letters to Meyerhold', in Kunst & Museumjournaal 6, (1990), pp. 9-10; as quoted by Paul Wood in The great Utopia, - The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932; Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1992, p. 24 – note 112
This quote clarifies Malevich's famous return to the figuration of the Russian peasant life, in the time of forced collectivization of Russian agriculture: 'for him [= Malevich] the return to figuration was not a break with the Revolution but a way of safeguarding it and preventing the return of Classicism and Naturalism' (Paul Wood in The great Utopia; Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1992, p. 24 – note 112)
1931 - 1935

David Hume photo
David Brin photo
Jacob Bronowski photo