Exactitude Quotes

• Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Life, Lying, Waiting

  "Orthodoxy". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, Chapter VI : The Paradoxes of Christianity, 1908.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Since photography gives us every guarantee of exactitude that we could desire (they really believe that, the mad fools !), then photography and art are the same thing.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Photography, Art, Believe

  Charles Baudelaire, Jonathan Mayne (1981). “Art in Paris 1845-1862: salons and other exhibitions”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable one. The trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Real, World, Trouble

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.59, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Man associates ideas not according to logic or verifiable exactitude, but according to his pleasure and interests. It is for this reason that most truths are nothing but prejudices.

  Remy de Gourmont

  Men, Ideas, Prejudice

  14 Copy quote

• Sex and art are the same thing.

  Pablo Picasso

  Art, Sex

  27 Copy quote

• Exactitude is not truth.

  Henri Matisse

  Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.179, Univ of California Press

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. ... It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wilderness lies in wait.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Real, Lying, Waiting

  "Orthodoxy". Chapter VI: "The Paradoxes of Christianity". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1908.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• As to your Newton, I confess I do not understand his void and his gravity; I admit he has demonstrated the movement of the heavenly bodies with more exactitude than his forerunners; but you will admit it is an absurdity to to maintain the existence of Nothing.

  Frederick The Great

  Movement, Body, Void

  Letter 221 to Voltaire on November 25, 1777. "Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great", translated by Richard Aldington, 1927.

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• Pornography is the quadraphonics of sex. It adds a third and fourth track to the sexual act. It is the hallucination of detail that rules. Science has already habituated us to this microscopics, this excess of the real in its microscopic detail, this voyeurism of exactitude.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Sex, Real, Track

  15 Copy quote

• There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.

  Henri Matisse

  Art, Flower, Rose

  28 Copy quote

• On the ostensible exactitude of certain branches of human knowledge, including mathematics. The exactness is a fake.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Knowledge, Fake, Branches

  7 Copy quote

• Whenever I am embraced by land and seascape I draw ideas for new sculptures; new forms to touch and walk around, new people to embrace, with an exactitude of form that those without sight can hold and realize... ...It is essentially practical and passionate.

  Barbara Hepworth

  Sight, Land, Ideas

  Studio International 171, p.280, June 1966.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• I do not believe there is anything useful which men can know with exactitude that they cannot know by arithmetic and algebra.

  Nicolas Malebranche

  Believe, Knowledge, Science

  7 Copy quote

• Golf is not, on the whole, a game for realists. By its exactitudes of measurements it invites the attention of perfectionists.

  Heywood Hale Broun

  Golf, Games, Attention

  9 Copy quote

• Among the minor, yet striking characteristics of mathematics, may be mentioned the fleshless and skeletal build of its propositions; the peculiar difficulty, complication, and stress of its reasonings; the perfect exactitude of its results; their broad universality; their practical infallibility.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Stress, Math, Perfect

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1931). “Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• An artist must never be a prisoner. Prisoner? An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success, etc.

  Henri Matisse

  Art, Style, Etc

  Henri Matisse (2011). “Matisse: Drawing Life”, Queensland Art Gallery

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The so-called conscientiousness of the majority of painters is only perfection applied to the art of boring.

  Eugene Delacroix

  Art, Boredom, Perfection

  9 Copy quote

• Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.

  Henri Matisse

  Funny, Art, Expression

  "The Christian Science Monitor", quoted in the review of "The Drawings of Henri Matisse" exhibit at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art by Theodore F. Wolff, March 25, 1985.

  66 Copy quote

  Show source

• I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me.

  Henri Matisse

  Art, Emotional, Feelings

  Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.66, Univ of California Press

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sometimes a man imagines that he will lose himself if he gives himself, and keep himself if he hides himself. But the contrary takes place with terrible exactitude.

  Ernest Hello

  Men, Giving, Making A Difference

  54 Copy quote

• Cold exactitude is not art... The so-called consciousness of the majority of painters is only perfection applied to the art of boring. People like that, if they could, would work with the same minute attention on the back of their canvas.

  Eugene Delacroix

  Art, People, Perfection

  35 Copy quote

• Things worthwhile generally don’t just happen. Luck is a fact, but should not be a factor. Good luck is what is left over after intelligence and effort have combined at their best. Negligence or indifference are usually reviewed from an unlucky seat. The law of cause and effect and causality both work the same with inexorable exactitudes. Luck is the residue of design.

  Branch Rickey

  Good Luck, Law, Design

  69 Copy quote

• The best penance is to have patience with the sorrows God permits. A very good penance is to dedicate oneself to fulfill the duties of everyday with exactitude and to study and work with all our strength.

  Peter Damian

  Sorrow, Everyday, Penance

  70 Copy quote

• Writing is eternal, For therein the dead heart liveth, the clay-cold tongue is eloquent, And the quick eye of the reader is cleared by the reed of the scribe. As a fossil in the rock, or a coin in the mortar of a ruin, So the symbolled thoughts tell of a departed soul: The plastic hand hath its witness in a statue, and exactitude of vision in a picture, And so, the mind, that was among us, in its writings is embalmed.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Writing, Heart, Eye

  6 Copy quote

• We debase the richness of both nature and our own minds if we view the great pageant of our intellectual history as a compendium of new information leading from primal superstition to final exactitude. We know that the sun is hub of our little corner of the universe, and that ties of genealogy connect all living things on our planet, because these theories assemble and explain so much otherwise disparate and unrelated information not because Galileo trained his telescope on the moons of Jupiter or because Darwin took a ride on a Galápagos tortoise.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Moon, Views, Ties

  "Eight Little Piggies". Book by Stephen Jay Gould, "A Foot Soldier for Evolution", p. 441, 1993.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source