Irving Stone quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Irving Stone

Irving Stone Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Irving Stone on Wise Famous Quotes.

I can not draw sheep and cows if I do not understand their lives.
[Vincent Van Gogh]

Man's spirit grows hungry for art in the same way his stomach growls for food ...

A man who has not suffered has nothing to tell with his paintings.

Pleasure is one of the most important things in life, as important as food or drink.

An artist would not rise above the mediocrity if he condemns it.

I paint only what I love.
[Vincent Van Gogh]

Talent is cheap; dedication is expensive. It will cost you your life.

Time has a texture. Each period of waiting looms its own design. For Abigail, this one was shot through with golden threads. -Those Who Love, p. 130

Every man must settle down once in a lifetime.

Art destroys the life.

My books are based 98 percent on documentary evidence.

Bleed me of art, and there won't be enough liquid left in me to spit! [Michelangelo Buonorotti]

Being mad is even pleasant. But only a madman understands that.

Wherever at least two art lovers meet, Vincent Van Gogh's name is holy.

Diligence does not work if there is a lack of innate talent.

And rout the magical mystical moonlight with fierce proof of its own greater power to light, to heat, to make everything known.

It's freezing up here. What did you use to keep warm?"
"Indignation," said Michelangelo. "Best fuel I know. Never burns out.

There are neither good nor evil, only the existence and action.

Vincent did not know how to express his feelings in words. He knew how to paint them.
However, one cannot paint the farewell.

He was a victim of his own integrity, which forced him to do his best, even when he would have preferred to do nothing at all.

Artists thrive on suffering.

To be an artist is first to be a manual laborer.

Inside yourself you're strong. That's the place where strength counts. Strength shows not only in how fast you can chop down trees.' -p. 5

A person may paint or talk about painting but he cannot do both at the same time.

The most perfect guide is nature. Continue without fail to draw something every day.

I was thinking that Rembrandt would have like to paint you.

Have you ever been in love?"
"...in a way."
"It's always 'in a way.

Many times in your life you may think you are failing, but ultimately you will express yourself and that expression will justify your life.

Life's not so bad after all. There are not only poison but also antidotes.

Indignation. Best fuel I know. Never burns out.

Every human life had its pattern that had to be worked out slowly to its ultimate conclusion.

Drawing is the poet's written line, set down to see if there be a story worth telling, a truth worth revealing.

An impressionist is the one who does not paint like everyone, does not obey the rules and attitude.
[Vincent Van Gogh]

We ... believe that art is religious, because it is one of man's highest aspirations. There is no such thing as pagan art, only good and bad art.

No one has called any of my pictures obscene ever but I have been constantly blamed for an even greater sin - the ugliness.
[Vincent Van Gogh]

There's no love without pain.

Cardinal Giovanni still did not like delicate matters; they were usually painful.

[Vincent Van Gogh] 'Oh Theo, don't you think I'm the black sheep, do you?'
[Theo Van Gogh] 'I'm more inclined to consider you as an ass.'

I wanted the figures to be real and believable so that you would feel that with their very next breath would begin life itself.

Everyone has their own personality, its own character, and if he respects that, everything would finally fall over for good only.

Reading is a stouthearted activity, disporting courage, keenness, stick-to-it-ness.

There is no thrill of mortal danger to surpass that of a lone man trying to create something that never existed before.

Each of us has his own alphabet with which to create poetry.

An artist without ideas is a mendicant; barren, he goes begging among the hours.

The writer ... an athlete required to break the four-minute mile every morning.

The simplest things that need self-restraint are the most difficult to replicate.

Watercolor is not my way of expression.
[Vincent Van Gogh]

An empty stomach is better than full and grief is better than happiness.

All artists are crackpots. And it's their finest feature.

There is more beauty in a harsh truth than in a pretty lie, more poetry in earthiness than in all the salons of Paris.

There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books.

An artist does not have to think about what he is doing.

To try to understand another human being, to grapple for his ultimate depths, that is the most dangerous of human endeavors.

Who loves - lives, who lives - works, and who works has some bread.

I will be an artist. I am sure I will. [Vincent Van Gogh]

You cannot be the good all the time - sometimes it is necessary to get angry.
[Vincent Van Gogh]

When I compare myself to the other fellows there is something stiff and awkward about me; I look as if I had been in prison for ten years.

No man is born into the world whose work is not born with him.

Normal people do not create art.

Art is amoral; so is life. For me there are no obscene pictures or books; there are only poorly conceived and poorly executed ones.

The one who has not seen Paris in the morning does not know how beautiful it is.

If Delacroix discovered painting when he had neither teeth nor health, I can discover it when I have neither teeth nor the mind.
[Vincent Van Gogh]

The artist has the liberty to exaggerate, to create in his novel a world more beautiful, more simple, more consoling than ours.

The brooding is better than the joy because even if the heart fills with happiness, it still mourns.

The sculptor is master of time; he can change his subjects forward or back.

Loneliness is a kind of prison.
[Vincent Van Gogh]

Religion will never show the way.

Sometimes men are generous and forgiving, sometimes angry and blind.

Only suffering grows big artists.

One should not become an artist because he can, but because he must. It is only for those who would be miserable without it.

The real artist while he paints does not think of the sale, only of the need to make a beautiful living thing.

That horrible moment of suspense when the artist shows one of his creations to strange eyes for the first time.

Fortune is beastly - it is only suitable for cows and businessmen.

Perhaps you could not find such godless, such ruthless and such materialist people as clergy.

You know, Nabby, there's mighty few pleasures in life to equal doing one's job. It is an act of love ... -p. 131

Morality is similar to religion - it is a somniferous drug which blinds people from seeing the squalor of their lives.

I do not know a better cure for mental illness than a book.

Art is amoral; so is life.

What meaning has a compliment if one hears it night and day.

Misery is the only thing in the world that has no end or edge.

The artist has to take risks.

After all, the world is still great.

What we know of others is our personal secret.

'Tell me, please,' Van Gogh asked, 'is it justifiable that a person wastes his only life by selling worthless paintings for fools?

Oh, my job ... I sacrificed my whole life ... and almost lost my mind.
[Vincent Van Gogh]

Actually, Paris wakes up when it comes time for aperitif.

The maximum value of art is that it allows the artist to express himself.

He had never believed that spirituality had to be anemic or aesthetic.

Pain did curious things to him. It made him sensitive to the pain of others.

A canvas that I have covered is worth more than a blank canvas. My pretensions go no further; that is my right to paint, my reason for painting.

He ... breathed in
heavy gulps of air to prove to himself that he was three-dimensional.

Someday my paintings will be hanging in the Louvre. [Vincent Van Gogh]

Do not call yourself old. A man is as old as the creative force within him.

He had been standing still; for an artist, one of the more painful forms of death.

He had always loved God. In his darkest hours he cried out, God did not create us to abandon us.

It's so easy to love. The only hard thing is to be loved.
[Vincent Van Gogh]

Money makes the man a beast.

The best romance is inside marriage; the finest love stories come after the wedding, not before.

They had painted in a grand rush to keep intact the purity of their first impression, the mood in which the motif had been conceived.

We are all are cripples in some way.
[Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec]