Composition Quotes - Page 12

• I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wall, Confused, Ears

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.190, Simon and Schuster

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• Since it is necessary for specific ideas to have definite and consequently as far as possible selected terms, I have proposed to call substances of similar composition and dissimilar properties isomeric, from the Greek ίσομερης (composed of equal parts).

  Jons Jacob Berzelius

  Science, Ideas, Greek

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• In large studio paintings... composition, or arrangement, may be better studied, and nearer perfection, washes may be more suavely graded.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Perfection, May, Painting

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• A schism has taken place among the chemists. A particular set of them in France have undertaken to remodel all the terms of the science, and to give every substance a new name, the composition, and especially the termination of which, shall define the relation in which it stands to other substances of the same family.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Taken, Science, Names

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, 2: Correspondence and Private Papers”, p.454

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• The micro-compositions are the pieces themselves, but the macro-composition is the whole set of them and how it moves from track to track and how the titles relate to one another, for example. Always when I do records like this of a selection of instrumental pieces - the titles, to me, are very important.

  Brian Eno

  Moving, Track, Important

  Interview with Mark Richardson, pitchfork.com. November 1, 2010.

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• Do not be afraid that too much labour over the composition is going to kill the spontaneity. Those who absorb and digest their experiences are, of a sudden, mountains of strength and can produce pictures with spontaneous start and finish.

  John F. Carlson

  Mountain, Too Much, Spontaneity

  John F. Carlson (2013). “Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting”, p.131, Courier Corporation

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• From a slight, undetermined drawing, where the ideas of the composition and character are just touched upon, the imagination supplies more than the painter himself, probably, could produce. And we accordingly often find that the finished work disappoints the expectation that was raised from the sketch.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Character, Ideas, Drawing

  Sir Joshua Reynolds (1824). “The Complete Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds: First President of the Royal Academy : with an Original Memoir, and Anecdotes of the Author”, p.217

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• Women continue receiving less salary for the same kind of job. Women have a higher unemployment rate in our country. When you analyze the composition of poverty, you will find that most of the families in poverty are being run by a woman.

  Laura Chinchilla

  Country, Running, Jobs

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• I've always felt that there's a point where a piece seems to be alive, that is, living. And that's the point where I know the composition is finished.

  David Tudor

  Pieces, Alive, Knows

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• Today we can say that at last the director writes the film. The image--its plastic composition and the way it is set in time, because it is founded on a much higher degree of realism--has at its disposal more means of manipulating reality and of modifying it from within. The film-maker is no longer the competitor of the painter and the playwright, he is, at last the equal of the novelist

  Andre Bazin

  Writing, Mean, Reality

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• Are not gross bodies and light convertible into one another; and may not bodies receive much of their activity from the particles of light which enter into their composition? The changing of bodies into light, and light into bodies, is very conformable to the course of Nature, which seems delighted with transmutations.

  Isaac Newton

  Light, Body, May

  'Opticks' (1730 ed.) bk. 3, pt. 1, qu. 30

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• Indeed, I have observed one ingredient, somewhat necessary in a man’s composition towards happiness, which people of feeling would do well to acquire; a certain respect for the follies of mankind: for there are so many fools whom the opinion of the world entitles to regard, whom accident has placed in heights of which they are unworthy, that he who cannot restrain his contempt or indignation at the sight will be too often quarrelling with the disposal of things to relish that share which is allotted to himself. 

  Henry Mackenzie

  Men, Sight, People

  Henry Mackenzie (1837). “The Man of Feeling: The Man of the World ...: The Stories of La Roche, Louisa Venoni, and Nancy Collins: Being the Whole of the Popular Works of the Late Henry Mackenzie, Esq”, p.5

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• Nature is a mere pretext for a decorative composition, plus sentiment. It suggests emotion, and I translate that emotion into art.

  Georges Braque

  Art, Emotion, Plus

  Raymond Cogniat, Georges Braque, Joanne Greenspun (1980). “Georges Braque”

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• Musical compositions, it should be remembered, do not inhabit certain countries, certain museums, like paintings and statues. The Mozart Quintet is not shut up in Salzburg: I have it in my pocket.

  Henri Rabaud

  Music, Country, Museums

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• Typography is to literature as musical performance is to composition: an essential act of interpretation, full of endless opportunities for insight or obtuseness.

  Robert Bringhurst

  Opportunity, Endless Opportunities, Design

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• If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman.

  Socrates

  Inspirational, Depression, Believe

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• I'd really rather leave it to others to say what they see in it and to see if I've put something into my photographs beyond a mere recording. Yes, I've chosen the camera position, how I'm going to print the negative, the angel of the lens, what I'm going to include and exclude in the composition, so on and so forth. But, I'm still photographing a work of art, and I would rather leave it to others to comment on my work, as I just left it to you.

  Bruce Barnbaum

  Photography, Art, Angel

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• I waited for the idea to consolidate, for the grouping and composition of themes to settle themselves in my brain.

  Claude Monet

  Ideas, Brain, Settling

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• The process of composition, messing around with paragraphs and trying to make really good prose, is hardwired into my personality.

  Rick Moody

  Personality, Trying, Process

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• Of all the arts, abstract painting is the most difficult. It demands that you know how to draw well, that you have a heightened sensitivity for composition and for colors, and that you be a true poet. This last is essential.

  Wassily Kandinsky

  Art, Color, Abstract Painting

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• When I was a boy, my family took great care with our snapshots. We really planned them. We made compositions. We posed in front of expensive cars, homes, that werent ours. We borrowed dogs. Almost every family picture taken of us when I was young had a different borrowed dog in it.

  Richard Avedon

  Dog, Taken, Home

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• Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Eye, Expression

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• My father taught me to paint when I was young with watercolors and so I learned at a very young age the essential elements of the value of light and composition.

  Matthew Modine

  Father, Light, Age

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• And I used to write novels and little stories and compositions and I - but I put them away because I started acting when I was 17. So there wasn't much time.

  Joan Collins

  Writing, Acting, Stories

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• Composition is a way of living out your philosophy and calling it art.

  Brian Eno

  Art, Philosophy, Calling

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