Irving Stone Quotes

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

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

Savoir souffrir sans se plaindre, ça c'est la seule chose pratique, c'est la grande science, la leçon à apprendre, la solution du problème de la vie.[Knowing how to suffer without complaining is the only practical thing, it's the great science, the lesson to learn, the solution to the problem of life.]

He made his colours, built his stretchers, plastered his canvas, painted his pictures, carpentered his frames, and painted them. 'Too bad I can't buy my own pictures,' he murmured aloud. 'Then I'd be completely self-sufficient.'

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

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

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

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

From the biography of Freud, by Irving Stone, said by Freud's fiance after he teased her for being sweet, "Beware of truly sweet people. They have will of iron.

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

His mind was like a soup dish, wide and shallow; it could hold a small amount of nearly anything, but the slightest jarring spilled the soup into somebody's lap

Art's a staple. Like bread or wine or a warm coat in winter. Those who think it is a luxury have only a fragment of a mind. Man's spirit grows hungry for art in the same way his stomach growls for food.

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

Normal people do not create art.

Nature always resists the artist at the beginning.

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

The paintings that laughed at him merrily from the walls were like nothing he had ever seen or dreamed of. Gone were the flat, thin surfaces. Gone was the sentimental sobriety. Gone was the brown gravy in which Europe had been bathing its pictures for centuries. Here were pictures riotously mad with the sun. With light and air and throbbing vivacity. Paintings of ballet girls backstage, done in primitive reds, greens, and blues thrown next to each other irreverantly. He looked at the signature. Degas.

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

What we know of others is our personal secret.

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

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

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