Eli Siegel Quotes

• If a mistake is not a stepping stone, it is a mistake.

  Eli Siegel

  Mistake, Gambling, Stones

  67 Copy quote

• The most important thing in industry is the person who does the industry, which is the worker... Labor is the only source of wealth.

  Eli Siegel

  Important, Doe, Wealth

  Eli Siegel (1970). “Goodbye Profit System: 8 Aesthetic Realism Lectures May 22 to July 10, 1970, Reported by Students of Aesthetic Realism”

  29 Copy quote

• The universe is Why, How, and What, in any order, and all at once.

  Eli Siegel

  Order, Universe

  18 Copy quote

• When truth is divided, errors multiply.

  Eli Siegel

  Honesty, Errors, Ethics

  27 Copy quote

• All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.

  Eli Siegel

  Opposites

  Eli Siegel (1968). “James and the children: a consideration of Henry James's The turn of the screw”, Definition Pr

  19 Copy quote

• The most important thing for you to do is see that in hoping to be affected by other things as fully as possible, you become more yourself.

  Eli Siegel

  Important, Importance, Important Things

  21 Copy quote

• Music for a long time has been telling what the world is like. What music has to say now, in a manner that has both logic and emotion in it, is that the world has a structure persons could like; be stronger by.... [If] the world is the oneness of opposites - and music says it is - the world is given an everlastingly sensible basis; for what could be more sensible that to be calm and forceful at once, reposeful and intense at once?

  Eli Siegel

  Opposites, Oneness, Long

  22 Copy quote

• Is there in every work of art something which shows reality as one and also something which shows reality as many and diverse? - must every work of art have a simultaneous presence of oneness and manyness, unity and variety?

  Eli Siegel

  Art, Reality, Oneness

  17 Copy quote

• Art is a way of showing greater fairness to things than is customary.

  Eli Siegel

  Art, Way, Fairness

  15 Copy quote

• In order to be deep, we sometimes have to cut through and cut apart. That is to be seen in the common phrase, 'Cut it out!' The reason is that this thing is seen as superfluous and therefore it should be excised, as a growth, unnecessary, should be excised.

  Eli Siegel

  Cutting, Order, Understanding

  18 Copy quote

• The resolution of conflict in self is like the making one of opposites in art.

  Eli Siegel

  Art, Self, Opposites

  Eli Siegel (1981). “Self and world: an explanation of aesthetic realism”, Definition Pr

  16 Copy quote

• You don't want to see things as they are because your ego would have to admit that things outside yourself are necessary for the self to be. You still have fun, as most people do, from manipulating things.

  Eli Siegel

  Fun, Self, People

  16 Copy quote

• In reality opposites are one; art shows this.

  Eli Siegel

  Art, Reality, Opposites

  "Everything Has to Do with Hardness and Softness" by Eli Siegel, 1969.

  14 Copy quote

• Is there in painting an effect which arises from the being together of repose and energy in the artist's mind? - can both repose and energy be seen in a painting's line and color, plane and volume, surface and depth, detail and composition? - and is the true effect of a good painting on the spectator one that makes at once for repose and energy, calmness and intensity, serenity and stir?

  Eli Siegel

  Artist, Color, Serenity

  14 Copy quote

• There is a quality of murky grandeur we give ourselves in having our own feelings, recoiling, separate from other things... To feel that we can care for ourselves without seeing our feelings as objects, and liking them as objects, is to be wrong about our care for ourselves.

  Eli Siegel

  Giving, Feelings, Quality

  18 Copy quote

• Concealment is equated, unknowingly to ourselves, with individuality; the more we conceal the more it seems we are asserting our very personality, resisting a somewhat repellent, unwelcome intrusion of other things into ourselves.

  Eli Siegel

  Personality, Individuality, Intrusion

  12 Copy quote

• The purpose of photography is to create an emotion about the world through what has been carefully seen and selected.

  Eli Siegel

  Photography, Purpose, World

  15 Copy quote

• The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites.

  Eli Siegel

  Art, Self, Opposites

  Eli Siegel (1981). “Self and world: an explanation of aesthetic realism”, Definition Pr

  14 Copy quote

• To see the outside world as the same stuff as our most secret or unknown thoughts is a fine necessity.

  Eli Siegel

  Secret, World, Stuff

  11 Copy quote

• Originality in art puts charm where it wasn't.

  Eli Siegel

  Art, Originality, Fairness

  10 Copy quote

• True individuality is the repose arising from the relation of a self to all it has to do with. Bad individuality has in it a separation between outward action and a flat repose inwardly.

  Eli Siegel

  Self, Individuality, Action

  15 Copy quote

• There is not one thing that music does which does not say something about how a person should organize himself, too.

  Eli Siegel

  Musical, Doe, Should

  13 Copy quote

• One of the things called forth by the Imagist movement in poetry was neatness; and when we say keenness, we mean neatness. A knife that is keen is also a knife that cuts neatly; it isn't brutal. Sharpness is different from brutality. Brutality is clumsy: it is wide - it has a lot of fist and thumb and no delicate finger.

  Eli Siegel

  Mean, Cutting, Knives

  21 Copy quote

• We should see the desire for neatness, the desire for sharp impressions, as a desire in art.

  Eli Siegel

  Art, Desire, Should

  26 Copy quote

• Reality is all that which can affect one.

  Eli Siegel

  Reality

  15 Copy quote

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