Quotes to inspire and reflect

A man of supreme folly: his life flies away while he is merely hoping to enjoy it.

He who despises painting has no love for the philosophy in nature.

My works are the issue of simple and plain experience which is the true mistress.

The good painter must paint two things: a person and the essence of his soul.

Abbreviators do harm to knowledge and to love.

The limiting surface of one thing is the beginning of another.

The divisions of Perspective are 3, as used in drawing; of these, the first includes the diminution in size of opaque objects; the second treats of the diminution and loss of outline in such opaque objects; the third, of the diminution and loss of color at long distances.

The painter strives and competes with nature.

The lover is moved by the beloved object as the senses are by sensual objects; and they unite and become one and the same thing. The work is the first thing born of this union; if the thing loved is base the lover becomes base.

Just as food eaten without appetite is a tedious nourishment, so does study without zeal damage the memory by not assimilating what it absorbs.

Given the cause nature produces the effect in the briefest manner that it can employ.

It reflects no great honor on a painter to be able to execute one thing well.

If on your own or by the criticism of others you discover error in your work, correct it then and there; otherwise in exposing your work to the public, you will expose your error also.

The variety of color in objects cannot be discerned at a great distance, excepting in those parts which are directly lighted up by the solar rays.

Men born in hot countries love the night because it refreshes them and have a horror of light because it burns them.

A single and distinct luminous body causes stronger relief in the objects than a diffused light; as may be seen by comparing one side of a landscape illuminated by the sun, and one overshadowed by clouds, and illuminated only by the diffused light of the atmosphere.

To speak ill of a good person is not truly good, all in all.

Oh! how foul a thing, that we should see the tongue of one animal in the guts of another.

Nothing is more apt to deceive us than our own judgment of our work. We derive more benefit from having our faults pointed out by our enemies than from hearing the opinions of friends.

Love shows itself more in adversity than in prosperity; as light does, which shines most where the place is darkest.

Ask counsel of him who rules himself well.

When the thing taken into union is perfectly adapted to that which receives it, the result is delight and pleasure and satisfaction.

When that which loves is united to the thing beloved it can rest there; when the burden is laid down it finds rest there. There will be eternal fame also for the inhabitants of that town, constructed and enlarged by him.

The vivacity and brightness of colors in a landscape will never bear any comparison with a landscape in nature when it is illumined by the sun, unless the painting is placed in such a position that it will receive the same light from the sun as does the landscape.

Weight is caused by one element being situated in another; and it moves by the shortest line towards its centre, not by its own choice, not because the centre draws it to itself, but because the other intervening element cannot withstand it.

Men and words are ready made, and you, O Painter, if you do not know how to make your figures move, are like an orator who knows not how to use his words.

Nature is constrained by the cause of her laws which dwell inborn in her. Variant: Nature is constrained by the order of her own law which lives and works within her.

Many will be busied in taking away from a thing, which will grow in proportion as it is diminished.

Sculptured figures which appear in motion, will, in their standing position, actually look as if they were falling forward.

The painter who draws by practice and judgment of the eye without the use of reason is like the mirror which reproduces within itself all the objects which are set opposite to it without knowledge of the same.

Those who become enamored of the art, without having previously applied to the diligent study of the scientific part of it, may be compared to mariners who put to the sea in a ship without rudder or compass and therefore cannot be certain of arriving at the wished for port.

I have solved what color is, however ; I still have no idea about what line is.

Things that are separate shall be united and acquire such virtue that they will restore to man his lost memory.

There are many kinds of beauty as people who possess it.

All the elements will be seen mixed together in a great whirling mass, now borne towards the centre of the world, now towards the sky; and now furiously rushing from the South towards the frozen North, and sometimes from the East towards the West, and then again from this hemisphere to the other.

Each man is always in the middle of the surface of the earth and under the zenith of his own hemisphere, and over the centre of the earth.

I have discovered that a screw-shaped device such as this, if it is well made from starched linen, will rise in the air if turned quickly.

The grave will fall in upon him who digs it.

Make an effort to collect the good features from many beautiful faces.

Painting is concerned with the ten things you can see: these are darkness and brightness, substance and color, form and place, remoteness and near ness, movement and rest.

I am not to blame for putting forward, in the course of my work on science, any general rule derived from a previous conclusion.

It seems that it had been destined before that I should occupy myself so thoroughly with the vulture, for it comes 104 to my mind as a very early memory, when I was still in the cradle, a vulture came down to me, he opened my mouth with his tail and struck me a few times with his tail against my lips.

The fox when it sees a flock of herons or magpies or birds of that kind, suddenly flings himself on the ground with his mouth open to look as he were dead; and these birds want to peck at his tongue, and he bites off their heads.

One shall be born from small beginnings which will rapidly become vast. This will respect no created thing, rather will it, by its power, transform almost every thing from its own nature into another.

Movement will fail sooner than usefulness.

Man’s external form, marvelously constructed, is not much as compared with the divine soul that dwells inside that structure.

It is no small benefit on finding oneself in bed in the dark to go over again in the imagination the main lines of the forms previously studied, or other 103 noteworthy things conceived by ingenious speculation.

He who fears dangers will not perish by them.