Quotes about surface
page 2

“The principal subject is the surface, which has its color, its laws over and above those of object.”

Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) French painter and printmaker

“It is only when we move to modem times that we find the first traces of sarva-dharma-samabhâva surfacing in India in the form of the Brahmo Samaj. Raja Ram Mohun Roy, the founder of this cult, was a votary of Islamic monotheism, and later on became infatuated with Jesus Christ. He confused the monism of the Upanishads with the monotheism of Biblical creeds, and gave birth to a lot of confusion. But, by and large, he stayed a Hindu who had some very hard words to say about the doings of Islam and Christian missionaries in India...”

Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833) Indian religious, social, and educational reformer, and humanitarian

S.R.Goel, Preface, in Goel, Sita Ram (ed.) (1998). Freedom of expression: Secular theocracy versus liberal democracy.

Birth, Christ, Time

“From my early youth, since I attained the age of puberty before I was twenty, until the present time when I am over fifty, I have ever recklessly launched out into the midst of these ocean depths, I have ever bravely embarked on this open sea, throwing aside all craven caution; I have poked into every dark recess, I have made an assault on every problem, I have plunged into every abyss, I have scrutinized the creed of every sect, I have tried to lay bare the inmost doctrines of every community. All this have I done that I might 68 distinguish between true and false, between sound tradition and heretical innovation. Whenever I meet one of the Batiniyah, I like to study his creed; whenever I meet one of the Zahiriyah, I want to know the essentials of his belief. If it is a philosopher, I try to become acquainted with the essence of his philosophy; if a scholastic theologian I busy myself in examining his theological reasoning; if a Sufi, I yearn to fathom the secret of his mysticism; if an ascetic (muta'ahhid) , I investigate the basis of his ascetic practices; if one ofthe Zanadiqah or Mu'attilah, I look beneath the surface to discover the reasons for his bold adoption of such a creed.”

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111) Persian Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and mystic

The Deliverance from Error https://www.amazon.com/Al-Ghazalis-Path-Sufism-Deliverance-al-Munqidh/dp/1887752307, p: 20-21

Study, Time, Business, Communication

“Never leap into a lake without knowing what’s beneath the surface.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1973

“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.”

Karl Marx book The Communist Manifesto

Source: The Communist Manifesto (1848), Section 1, paragraph 19

“Can you see that this “I” is fleeting, a temporary formation, like a wave pattern on the surface of the water? Who is it that sees this? Who is it that is aware of the fleetingness of your physical and psychological form? I am. This is the deeper “I” that has nothing to do with past and future.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003)

Water, Past, Future

“Wonderful is the depth of Thy oracles, whose surface is before us, inviting the little ones; and yet wonderful is the depth, O my God, wonderful is the depth. It is awe to look into it; and awe of honour, and a tremor of love. The enemies thereof I hate vehemently. Oh, if Thou wouldest slay them with Thy two-edged sword, that they be not its enemies! For thus do I love, that they should be slain unto themselves that they may live unto Thee.”

Aurelius Augustinus book Confessions

Source: Confessions (c. 397), XII, 14

God, Hate, Love

“But Mike was like a Bjork song-all happy and giddy and fun on the surface, but bubbling with turmoil and pain underneath.”

Sara Shepard (1973) Author

Source: Unbelievable

Pain, Happiness

“A story isn't a charcoal sketch, where every stroke lies on the surface to be seen. It's an oil painting, filled with layers that the author must uncover so carefully to show its beauty.”

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (1984) Novelist

Beauty, Painting

“You alone became the outer surface of my life, the side I never see, and you will be that, the unknown part of me, until I die.”

Marguerite Duras book Emily L.

Source: Emily L.

Life, Parting

“You might think you made a new world or a new self, but your old self is always gonna be there, just below the surface, and if something happens, it'll stick its head out and say 'Hi.' You don't seem to realize that. You were made somewhere else.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

World, Thinking

“But these young people have such an intelligent, knowledgeable surface, and then the crust suddenly breaks and you look down into the depths of confusion you didn't know existed.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

People, Intelligence, Knowledge

“… to slip beneath the surface and soar along the silent bottom of the sea agile and shining in water honeycombed with light.”

Ellen Meloy (1946–2004) American writer

Light, Water, Sea

“The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter I-V, Chapter II.

Time, Painting

“The world was reduced to the surface of her skin and her inner self was safe from all bitterness.”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), p. 279, referring to Amaranta

World

“Fish die belly upward, and rise to the surface. It's their way of falling.”

André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist

Way, Fish

“Little flashes of sun on the surface of a cold, dark sea.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Source: Nausea

Sun, Sea

“Fiona has the same glacial beauty of an iceburg, but unlike the iceburg she has absolutely nothing below the surface.”

Roald Dahl book Matilda

Source: Matilda

Beauty

“The fact is, that what de Sade was trying to bring to the surface of the conscious mind was precisely the thing that revolted that mind… From the very first he set before the consciousness things which it could not tolerate.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

“I found it quite easy to carry on a casual conversation it was as if my real feelings were down fathoms deep in my mind and what we said was just a feathery surface spray.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

Feeling

“I kept waiting for him to lay bare something more than this pointed unobjectionableness, but all that rose to the surface was more surface”

Philip Roth book American Pastoral

Source: American Pastoral

Waiting

“When no one you know tells the truth, you learn to see under the surface.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

Truth, Learning

“Don't show it and don't panic. Do like the ducks; on the surface stay calm, and below it paddle lile hell”

Dan Brown book The Lost Symbol

Source: The Lost Symbol

Hell

“The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), History
Context: The difference between men is in their principle of association. Some men classify objects by color and size and other accidents of appearance; others by intrinsic likeness, or by the relation of cause and effect. The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. For the eye is fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance. Every chemical substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety of appearance.

Men

“You can't be deep without a surface”

Jonathan Lethem You Don't Love Me Yet

Source: You Don't Love Me Yet

“The underground of the city is like what's underground in people. Beneath the surface, it's boiling with monsters.”

Guillermo del Toro (1964) Mexican film director

People

“Troy's deformities lay deep down from a woman's vision, whilst his embellishments were upon the very surface; thus contrasting with homely Oak, whose defects were patent to the blindest, and whose virtues were as metals in a mine.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd

Home

“My surface is myself.
Under which
to witness, youth is
buried. Roots?
Everybody has roots.”

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet

Youth

“Commander! Sir! Wake up!"
Jack surfaced from sleep, wondering who the commander was and wishing he'd respond so he could go back to sleep - until he remembered that he was the commander.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Dragon Heir

Sleep

“Reality is like a fruitcake; pretty enough to look at but with all sorts of nasty things lurking just beneath the surface.”

A. Lee Martinez Gil's All Fright Diner

Source: Gil's All Fright Diner

Reality

“She sowed in my mind the idea that reality is not only what we see on the surface; it has a magical dimension as well and, if we so desire, it is legitimate to enhance it and color it to make our journey through life less trying.”

Isabel Allende book Eva Luna

Source: Eva Luna

Life, Color, Idea, Reality

“This is what terrorism is occupied with as well: making real, palpable violence surface in opposition to the invisible violence of security.”

Jean Baudrillard book Simulacra and Simulation

Source: Simulacra and Simulation

“Claire stretched out against the wall and kissed it. "Glad to see you, too," she whispered, and pressed her cheek against the smooth surface. It almost felt like it hugged her back.
"Dude, it's a," Shane said from behind her. "Hug somebody who cares.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Lord of Misrule

Kiss

“All I'd ever wanted was to forget. but even when I thought I had, pieces had kept emerging, like bits of wood floating up to the surface that only hint at the shipwreck below.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

Forgetting

“Friendship is a simple thing, and yet complicated; friendship is on the surface, something natural, something taken for granted, and yet underneath one could find worlds.”

Jamaica Kincaid (1949) Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer

Friendship, World, Nature

“this was the wonderful thing about strangers. they were big blank pieces of paper, you could draw watever you like on their impresionable surfaces”

Janet Fitch (1955) American writer

Source: Paint it Black

Drawing

“I felt like an undeveloped photograph that he was printing, my image rising to the surface under his gaze.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

“She was aware that in love even the most passionate idealism will not rid the body's surface of its terrible, basic importance.”

Milan Kundera book Laughable Loves

Source: Laughable Loves

Love, Passion

“Never trust a shiny surface. They hide a multitude of flaws.”

Melissa de la Cruz book Masquerade

Source: Masquerade

“If our lives are truly "hid with Christ in God," the astounding thing is that this hiddenness is revealed in all that we do and say and write. What we are is going to be visible in our art, no matter how secular (on the surface) the subject may be.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

God, Art, Christ

“Scientific principles and laws do not lie on the surface of nature. They are hidden, and must be wrested from nature by an active and elaborate technique of inquiry.”

John Dewey book Reconstruction in Philosophy

Source: Reconstruction in Philosophy

Lie, Law, Nature

“I love this quote when Valerian the King of the Nymphs says to his mate Shaye;

"I am Valerian, leader of the nymphs. You may call me Oh God, that is what the other surface dwellers have preferred to call me".”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Nymph King

Love, God, Quotes

“She thought of Aziza's stutter, and of what Aziza had said earlier about fractures and powerful collisions deep down and how sometimes all we see on the surface is a slight tremor.”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

“I will meet you on the nape of your neck one day, on the surface of intention, word becoming act.
We will breathe into each other the high mountain tales, where the snows come from, where the waters begin.”
-In the yellow time of pollen”

Luke Davies (1962) Australian writer

Mountain, Water, Time

“Behind her, Jace moved out into the water with a contained grace that barely rippled the surface. Simon behind him, was splashing and cursing.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Water

“I turned and bumped my head against his chest a few times. It was the nearest hard surface.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Slays

Time

“Where would I find enough leather
To cover the entire surface of the earth?
But with leather soles beneath my feet,
It’s as if the whole world has been covered.”

Šantidéva (685–763) 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk and scholar

§ 5.13
Bodhicaryavatara, A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life
Context: Where would there be leather enough to cover the entire world? With just the leather of my sandals, it is as if the whole world were covered. Likewise, I am unable to restrain external phenomena, but I shall restrain my own mind. What need is there to restrain anything else?

World

“She closed her hands around his and shut her eyes, imagining their bed cut free of this strange prison, floating through space or on the surface of the ocean, just the two of them alone.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Imagination

“She was like a lone angel floating above the surface of the earth, laughing with delight because she could fly but crying out of loneliness.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Angels, Loneliness, Cry, Flying

“We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Powerful, Sea

“I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.”

Jonathan Swift book Les Voyages de Gulliver

Voyage to Brobdingnag, Ch. 6
Source: Gulliver's Travels (1726)

Nature, Suffering

“He was wearing a look that she found odd and compelling - that amusement that didn’t seem to pass beyond the surface of his features, as he found everything in the world both infinitely funny and infinitely tragic all at the same time.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

World, Time

“I felt like I'd been swimming so hard, and the water growing warmer and warmer the closer I got to the top. I wasn't there yet, but now I could see the surface, rippling just beyond my fingers.”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Source: Dreamland (2000)

Water

“Imagine how they would have mocked you if you proclaimed, 'Not only is the world a sphere, but there is an invisible, mystical force that holds everything to its surface'!”

Dan Brown book The Lost Symbol

Source: The Lost Symbol

World, Imagination

“I allowed myself to forget how totally I had fallen in love with Lestat's iridescent eyes, that I'd sold my soul for a many-colored and luminescent thing, thinking that a highly reflective surface conveyed the power to walk on water.”

Anne Rice book Interview with the Vampire

Source: Interview with the Vampire

Love, Color, Soul, Thinking

“Memories of ice and Trent surfaced, and I wrapped my arms around my middle. I had saved him, and he had saved me. What was wrong with us?”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Black Magic Sanction

Memory

“There are rocks deep enough in this earth that no matter what the rupture, they will never see the surface.

There is, I think, a fear of love.

There is a fear of love.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Love, Fear, Thinking

“The primitive in each of us climbs closer to the surface during the night, for the moon sings to it, and the cold void between the stars speaks its language. To that savage self, evil can look lovely in too little light.”

Dean Koontz book False Memory

Source: False Memory

Love, Star, Light, Evil

“She waited for the train to pass. Then she said, "I sometimes think that people’s hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what’s at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while.”

Haruki Murakami book Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Variant: I sometimes think that people's hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what's at the bottom. All you can do is guess from what comes floating to the surface every once in a while.
Source: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

People, Imagination, Thinking, Waiting

“The memory of oppressed people is one thing that cannot be taken away, and for such people, with such memories, revolt is always an inch below the surface.”

Howard Zinn book A People's History of the United States

Source: A People's History of the United States

People, Memory

“On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Truth, Lie, Intelligence

“There are parts of Texas where a fly lives ten thousand years and a man can't die soon enough. Time gets strange there from too much sky, too many miles from crack to crease in the flat surface of the land.”

Katherine Dunn book Geek Love

Source: Geek Love

Time, Parting, Flying

“Keep looking below surface appearances. Don't shrink from doing so just because you might not like what you find.”

Colin Powell (1937) Former U.S. Secretary of State and retired four-star general

Appearance

“Love like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with a soaking joy. But sometimes under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending to its roots keeping itself alive.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Love, Life, Joy

“It was funny to hear her voice aloud. Her thoughts and perceptions usually existed so deep inside her, they rarely made it to the surface without a deliberate effort.”

Ann Brashares The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Source: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Effort

“Love like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with soaking joy. But sometimes, under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending to its roots, keeping itself alive.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Love, Life, Joy

“We can see the Divine in each speck of dust, but that doesn't stop us from wiping it away with a wet sponge. The Divine doesn't disappear; it's transformed into the clean surface.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Witch Of Portobello

“Every intimacy carries secreted somewhere below its initial lovely surfaces, the ever-coiled makings of complete catastrophe.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Love, Secret

“Odd to think that the piece of you I know best is already dead. The cells on the surface of your skin are thin and flat without the blood vessels or nerve endings. Dead cells, thickest on the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Written on the Body

Thinking, Dead

“Surface beauty: blond hair, blue eyes" - she was looking at me - "is always easy to recognize. But if someone is braver, stronger, smarter, that's harder to see." - Kendra Hilferty”

Alex Flinn book Beastly

Source: Beastly

Beauty

“I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface.”

Stephen Sondheim (1930) American composer and lyricist

People

“Sometimes, all it takes to become human again is someone who can see you that way, no matter how you present on the surface.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

Way

“Memory warps time, as it does the sights and sounds and smells of reality; for what shapes it is emotion, which can twist what seems clear, just as the surface of a pond seems to bend the stick thrust into the water.”

Sherwood Smith book Crown Duel

Source: Crown Duel (Crown & Court #1 - 2, 1997)

Reality, Water, Memory, Time

“The witchlight made his skin paler, his eyes more intently blue. They were the color of the water in the North Atlantic, where the ice drifted on its blue-black surface like the snow clinging to the dark glass pane of a window.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Color, Water

“It's easy to look back and see it, and it's easy to give the advice, but the sad fact is, most people don't look beneath the surface until it's too late.”

Wendelin Van Draanen Flipped

Source: Flipped (2001)

People, Sadness

“Either that boy is the sanest creature on Earth, he thought, or he is so disturbed that our tests cannot even begin to scratch the surface.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Last Guardian

Boy

“A sense of wrongness, of fraught unease, as if long nails scraped the surface of the moon, raising the hackles of the soul.”

China Miéville book Perdido Street Station

Source: Perdido Street Station

Soul, Sense

“She felt happy these days, yet there was always an undercurrent of sadness just below the surface”

Diane Chamberlain (1950) American writer

Source: The Lost Daughter

Sadness, Happiness

“Look beneath the surface; let not the several quality of a thing nor its worth escape thee.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

VI, 3
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VI

“We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface hidden tension that is already alive”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
Context: Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

“There was the woman I was before my mom died and the one I was now, my old life sitting on the surface of me like a bruise.”

Cheryl Strayed book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Source: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Life, Moms

“If you touch me like that again, Evangeline,” he began in a husky tone, dropping to his seat once more, “in the space of a heartbeat, I will have you off this bike and onto the closest horizontal surface. And I woan be picky, no.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Poison Princess

“To shut your eyes is to guess nothing of blindness. Beneath your world of skies and faces and buildings exists a rawer and older world, a place where surface planes disintegrate and sounds ribbon in shoals through the air.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

World

“If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live. No more bees, no more pollination … no more men!”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

A variant — "Professor Einstein, the learned scientist, once calculated that if all bees disappeared off the earth, four years later all humans would also have disappeared" — appears in The Irish Beekeeper, v.19-20, 1965-66, p74, citing Abeilles et Fleurs (Bees and Flowers, the house magazine of Union Nationale de l'Apiculture Française) for June 1965. Snopes.com mentions its use in a beekeepers' protest in 1994 in Europe http://www.snopes.com/quotes/einstein/bees.asp suggesting invention and attribution to Einstein for political reasons. <br class="br">Misattributed

Men, Bee

“On the surface, we're polar opposites. Under the skin, though, we're the same: people think they know what they're getting, and they're always wrong.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

People, Thinking

“It was in 1947 that the idea of a conscious monochrome vision came to me... Pure, existential space was regularly winking at me, each time in a more impressive manner, and this sensation of total freedom attracted me so powerfully that I painted some monochrome surfaces just to 'see', to 'see' with my own eyes what existential sensibility granted me; absolute freedom! But each time I could neither imagine or think of the possibility of considering this as a painting, a picture, until the day when I said: Why not?”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

Source: before 1960, "Yves Klein, 1928 – 1962, Selected Writings", p. 15

Imagination, Idea, Thinking, Freedom

“Mathematics because of its nature and structure is peculiarly fitted for high school instruction [Gymnasiallehrfach]. Especially the higher mathematics, even if presented only in its elements, combines within itself all those qualities which are demanded of a secondary subject. It engages, it fructifies, it quickens, compels attention, is as circumspect as inventive, induces courage and self-confidence as well as modesty and submission to truth. It yields the essence and kernel of all things, is brief in form and overflows with its wealth of content. It discloses the depth and breadth of the law and spiritual element behind the surface of phenomena; it impels from point to point and carries within itself the incentive toward progress; it stimulates the artistic perception, good taste in judgment and execution, as well as the scientific comprehension of things. Mathematics, therefore, above all other subjects, makes the student lust after knowledge, fills him, as it were, with a longing to fathom the cause of things and to employ his own powers independently; it collects his mental forces and concentrates them on a single point and thus awakens the spirit of individual inquiry, self-confidence and the joy of doing; it fascinates because of the view-points which it offers and creates certainty and assurance, owing to the universal validity of its methods. Thus, both what he receives and what he himself contributes toward the proper conception and solution of a problem, combine to mature the student and to make him skillful, to lead him away from the surface of things and to exercise him in the perception of their essence. A student thus prepared thirsts after knowledge and is ready for the university and its sciences. Thus it appears, that higher mathematics is the best guide to philosophy and to the philosophic conception of the world (considered as a self-contained whole) and of one’s own being.”

Christian Heinrich von Dillmann (1829–1899) German educationist

Source: Die Mathematik die Fackelträgerin einer neuen Zeit (Stuttgart, 1889), p. 40.

Truth, World, School, Law

“Our units of temporal measurement, from seconds on up to months, are so complicated, asymmetrical and disjunctive so as to make coherent mental reckoning in time all but impossible. Indeed, had some tyrannical god contrived to enslave our minds to time, to make it all but impossible for us to escape subjection to sodden routines and unpleasant surprises, he could hardly have done better than handing down our present system. It is like a set of trapezoidal building blocks, with no vertical or horizontal surfaces, like a language in which the simplest thought demands ornate constructions, useless particles and lengthy circumlocutions. Unlike the more successful patterns of language and science, which enable us to face experience boldly or at least level-headedly, our system of temporal calculation silently and persistently encourages our terror of time.
…
It is as though architects had to measure length in feet, width in meters and height in ells; as though basic instruction manuals demanded a knowledge of five different languages. It is no wonder then that we often look into our own immediate past or future, last Tuesday or a week from Sunday, with feelings of helpless confusion.”

Robert Grudin (1938) American writer

Time and the Art of Living (1982)

God, Feeling, Knowledge, Science

“I begin a painting with a series of mistakes. The painting comes out of the correction of mistakes by feeling. I begin with shapes and colors which are not related internally nor to the external world; I work without images. Ultimate unifications come about through modulations of the surface by innumerable trials and efforts. The final picture is the process arrested at the moment when what I was looking for flashes into view.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

Cconversation with W.C. Seitz, in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983, p. 94
after 1970

World, Color, Feeling, Effort

“There is, of course, the critical difference between the pressure of hands against each other, and that of the stone against the hand: that in the case of the pressure of the hands against each other there is the sense of effort in each hand, while in the case of the stone there is only the sense of resistance in the stone against the pressing hand. However, the resistance remains an identical content of the two. Furthermore, the resistance of the hand arises only over against that of the stone. The stone defines the hand as necessarily as the hand the hand. It is a fundamental experience in which each object involves the other. It is that from which geometrical congruence is abstracted. Each surface, that of the hand and that of the stone, is given as immediately as the other, and the resistance of the one is given as immediately as that of the other. The abstraction of it in physical science is inertia. Out of the experience arise the physical thing and the organism. Neither is prior.”

George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) American philosopher, sociologist, and psychologist

Source: The Philosophy of the Act, 1938, p. 187. Essay 13. "Perception and the Spatiotemporal"

Sense, Effort, Science

“I understand why other people would want to stay in B&Bs. They're pretty. They're personal. They're “quaint,” a polite way of saying “no TV.” They are “romantic,” i. e., every object large enough for a flower to be printed on it is going to have a flower printed on it. They're “cozy,” meaning that a guest has to keep her belongings on the floor because every conceivable flat surface is covered in knickknacks, except for the one knickknack she longs for, a remote control.”

Sarah Vowell book Assassination Vacation

Source: Assassination Vacation (2005), p. 2

People, Way, Flowers, Understanding

“The essence of modernism lies in the use of the characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself, not in order to subvert it but in order to entrench it more firmly in its area of competence. Modernism used art to call attention to art. The limitations that constitute the medium of painting - the flat surface, the shape of the support, the properties of the pigment - came to be regarded as positive factors, and were acknowledged openly.”

Clement Greenberg (1909–1994) American writer and artist

1960s, Modernist Painting (1960)

Art, Support, Painting

“From one individual was multiplied the many people who inhabit the earth's surface. And even if that intellectual spirit, sown in earth and swallowed up in shadow, does not see the light and the source of his beginning, nevertheless, you created along with him everything through which he, kindled by wonder at those things which he contacts by the senses, can sometimes lift the eyes of his mind to you, the Creator of all, and can be reunited to you in highest love and so can finally return to his source with joy”

Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) German philosopher, theologian, jurist, and astronomer

De Pace Fidei (The Peace of Faith) (1453)

Love, People, Sense, Light

“Wine is a great danger, especially because it doesn't bring truth to the surface. Anything but the truth, indeed: it reveals especially the past and forgotten history of the individual rather than his present wish; it capriciously flings into the light also all the half-baked ideas with which in a more or less recent period one has toyed and then forgotten.”

Italo Svevo book Zeno's Conscience

Il vino è un grande pericolo specie perché non porta a galla la verità. Tutt'altro che la verità anzi: rivela dell'individuo specialmente la storia passata e dimenticata e non la sua attuale volontà; getta capricciosamente alla luce anche tutte le ideucce con le quali in epoca più o meno recente ci si baloccò e che si è dimenticate.
Source: La coscienza di Zeno (1923), P. 194; p. 232.

Truth, History, Idea, Light

“In that Renaissance (Cellini, Tintoretto, Titian..) there was an explosion of unique truthfulness, a love of painting and form... Then come the Jesuits and everything is formal; everything has to be taught and learned. It required a revolution for nature to be rediscovered; for Delacroix to paint his beach at Etratat, Corot his roman rubble, Gustave Courbet his forest scenes and his waves. And how miserable slow that revolution was, how many stages it had to go through!... These artists had not yet discovered that nature has more to do with depth than with surfaces. I can tell you, you can do things to the surface.... but by going deep you automatically go to the truth. You feel a healthy need to be truthful. You'd rather strip your canvas right down than invent or imagine a detail. You want to know.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), pp. 156-157, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif'

Love, Truth, Feeling, Imagination

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

4 quotes from: 'The Color in my Painting'
Homage to the square' (1964)

Color, Painting, Dependency

“The disharmoniousness (one might say, the negative rhythm) of the individual forms was that which primarily drew me, attracted me, during the period to which this watercolor belongs. The so-called rhythmic always comes on its own because in general the person himself is rhythmically built. Thus at least on the surface, the rhythmic is innate in people. Children, 'primitive' peoples, and laymen draw rhythmically..
In that period my soul was especially enchanted by the not-fitting-together of drawn and painterly form. Line serves the plane in that the former bounds the latter. And it makes my heart race in those cases when the independent plane springs over the confining line: line and plane are not in tune! It was this that produced a strong inner emotion in me, the inner 'ah!”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

2 quotes from Kandinsky's letter to Hans Arp, November 1912; in Friedel, Wassily Kandinsky, p. 489; as cited in Negative Rhythm: Intersections Between Arp, Kandinsky, Münter, and Taeuber, Bibiana K. Obler (including transl. - Yale University Press, 2014 <br class="br">Kandinsky was trying to explain to Arp his state of mind when he made his sketch for 'Improvisation with Horses' https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Wassily_Kandinsky_Cossacks_or_Cosaques_1910%E2%80%931.jpg, 1911, a watercolor belonging to Arp. Kandinsky had told Arp that he could have one of his pictures included in the 'Moderne Bund' (second) exhibition in Zurich, 1912, and this was the one Arp selected <br class="br">1910 - 1915

Children, People, Soul, Spring