Mere Quotes - Page 39

• But perhaps my art is the art of a lunatic, I thought, mere glittering quicksilver, a blue soul breaking in upon my pictures.

  Marc Chagall

  Art, Blue, Soul

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• The dynamo of our economic system is self-interest which may range from mere petty greed to admirable types of self-expression.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Self, Expression, Greed

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  Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.

  Duke Ellington

  Thoughtful, Past, Matter

  Mark Tucker, Duke Ellington (1995). “The Duke Ellington Reader”, p.326, Oxford Paperbacks

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• Sculpture is not the mere cutting of the form of anything in stone; it is the cutting of the effect of it. Very often the true form, in the marble, would not be in the least like itself.

  John Ruskin

  Cutting, Sculpture, Stones

  John Ruskin (1849). “The Seven Lamps of Architecture”, p.157

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• Informal relationships are not mere minor interstitial supplements to the major institutions of society. These informal relationships not only include important decision-making processes, such as the family, but also produce much of the background social capital without which the other major institutions of society could not function nearly as effectively as they do.

  Thomas Sowell

  Decision, Important, Social

  Thomas Sowell (1996). “Knowledge And Decisions”, p.30, Basic Books

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• Nothing as mundane as mere evidence can be allowed to threaten a vision so deeply satisfying.

  Thomas Sowell

  Vision, Evidence, Mundane

  Thomas Sowell (1999). “Barbarians Inside the Gates--and Other Controversial Essays”, Hoover Inst Press

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• The literary gift is a mere accident - is as often bestowed on idiots who have nothing to say worth hearing as it is denied to strenuous sages.

  Max Beerbohm

  Sage, Hearing, Idiot

  Sir Max Beerbohm, Rupert Hart-Davis (1988). “Letters of Max Beerbohm, 1892-1956”

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• My aim is to give you only the things with which I am completely satisfied, even if it means asking you a little more [time] for them... for if I were to do otherwise I'd turn into a mere painting machine and you would be landed with a pile of incomplete work which would put off the most enthusiastic of art collectors.

  Claude Monet

  Art, Mean, Giving

  Claude Monet (1999). “Monet by himself: paintings, drawings, pastels, letters”

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• It really is appallingly difficult to do something which is complete in every respect, and I think most people are content with mere approximations. Well, my dear friend, I intend to battle on, scrape off and start again.

  Claude Monet

  Thinking, People, Battle

  Claude Monet (2014). “Monet by Himself: Paintings, Drawings, Pastels, Letters”, Chartwell

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• Whatever we read from intense curiosity gives us the model of how we should always read. Plodding along page after page with an equal attention to each word results in attention to mere words.

  Ernest Dimnet

  Giving, Curiosity, Attention

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• A servile race Who, in mere want of fault, all merit place; Who blind obedience pay to ancient schools, Bigots to Greece, and slaves to musty rules.

  Charles Churchill

  School, Race, Criticism

  Charles Churchill (1776). “Poems”, p.17

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• You must not become a mere peddler of words. The thing to learn is to know what people are thinking about, not what they say.

  Sherwood Anderson

  Thinking, People, Peddler

  Sherwood Anderson (2012). “Sherwood Anderson: Collected Stories: Winesburg, Ohio / The Triumph of the Egg / Horses and Men / Death in the Woods / Uncollected Stories (Library of America #235)”, p.155, Library of America

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• Form is sometimes considered a mere spice added by the artist to the representation of objects in order to make it pleasurable.

  Rudolf Arnheim

  Artist, Order, Spices

  Rudolf Arnheim (1966). “Toward a Psychology of Art: Collected Essays”, p.40, Univ of California Press

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• Professors will lecture with more inspiration if they occasionally alternate the classroom with the beach: authors will write better when, as Macaulay used to do, they write for two hours, then pitch quoits, and then go back to their writing. But certainly more than the mere mechanical alternation is involved.

  Rollo May

  Beach, Inspiration, Writing

  Rollo May (1994). “The Courage to Create”, p.66, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Collecting at its best is very far from mere acquisitiveness; it may become one of the most humanistic of occupations, seeking to illustrate by the assembling of significant reliques, the march of the human spirit in its quest for beauty.

  Arthur Davison Ficke

  Quests, Occupation, May

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• A great novel is concerned primarily with the interior lives of its characters, as they respond to the inconvenient narratives that fate imposes on them. Movie adaptations of these monumental fictions often fail because they become mere exercises in interior decoration.

  Richard Schickel

  Character, Fate, Exercise

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• My master's visualizations were so powerful their condensation into matter was mere signature. Donald Walters, formerly Kriyananda, author of The Path about his guru Yogananda.

  Goswami Kriyananda

  Powerful, Achievement, Signatures

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• Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.

  Ammianus Marcellinus

  Desire, Wicked, Occupation

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 148-49, Annales, XXX. 9, 1922.

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• If intellection and knowledge were mere passion from without, or the bare reception of extraneous and adventitious forms, then no reason could be given at all why a mirror or looking-glass should not understand.

  Ralph Cudworth

  Passion, Glasses, Mirrors

  Ralph Cudworth (1845). “The True Intellectual System of the Universe: Wherein All the Reason and Philosophy of Atheism is Confuted, and Its Impossibility Demonstrated : with a Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality”, p.579

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• We pride ourselves on being the only species that understands the concept of risk, yet we have a confounding habit of worrying about mere possibilities while ignoring probabilities, building barricades against perceived dangers while leaving ourselves exposed to real ones.

  Jeffrey Kluger

  Real, Pride, Worry

  Jeffrey Kluger (2007). “Simplexity: the simple rules of a complex world”

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• Minute and elaborately finished pictures never strongly impress the mind, and are but mere curiosities to gratify persons insensible to higher excellencies.

  Samuel Prout

  Simplicity, Curiosity, Mind

  Samuel Prout, Rudolph Ackermann (1838). “Hints on Light and Shadow, Composition, Etc: As Applicable to Landscape Painting”, p.7

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• No self is of itself alone. It has a long chain of intellectual ancestors. The "I" is chained to ancestry by many factors ... This is not mere allegory, but an eternal memory.

  Erwin Schrodinger

  Memories, Self, Long

  "A Life of Erwin Schrödinger". Book by Walter Moore, 1994.

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• Maybe this is a utopian view of art but I do believe that art can function as a vehicle, that it isn't just a cultural pursuit, something that happens in art galleries. Unless art is linked to experience and the fear and joy of that, it becomes mere icing on the cake.

  Antony Gormley

  Art, Believe, Cake

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• If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn't love hard to believe?

  Yann Martel

  Believe, Belief, Life Of Pi Book

  Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.424, Canongate Books

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• There is a kind of thinking in the Church that wants to reduce the priest to a mere functionary, a managing director, where administration rather than doctrine and worship are to determine the form of the Church.

  Arthur Middleton

  Thinking, Church, Directors

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