Irving Stone famous quotes

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

#Love #Romance #Stories

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

#Men #Painting

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

#Inspirational #Friendship #Reading

Story writers say that love is concerned only with young people, and the excitement and glamour of romance end at the altar. How blind they are. The best romance is inside marriage; the finest love stories come after the wedding, not before.
-- Irving Stone

#Inspirational #Love Is #People

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

#Artist #Painful #Form

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

#Perfect #Failing #Guides

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

#Trying #Depth #Endeavor

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

#Book #Mental Illness #Illness

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

#Life #Beautiful #Art

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

#Heart #Joy #Brooding

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

#Mad #Madmen #Pleasant

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.]
-- Irving Stone

#Knowing #Suffering #Complaining

No artist is normal. Who happen to be normal cannot be an artist.
-- Irving Stone

#Artist #Normal

Our secret thoughts - do they ever show up? The small flame of our soul can be burning hot, but no one comes to its warmth. Passersby see only a small whiff going through the chimney. Don't we need to take care of that flame, cherish it and patiently wait until someone will come and sit at it, do we?
-- Irving Stone

#Flames #Waiting #Soul

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

#People #Drug #Morality

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

#Evil #Action #Existence

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

#Art #Maximum #Values

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

#Artist #Finest

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

#World #Misery #Ends

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

#Cows #Beastly #Fortune

Who wants to do good in this world must deny oneself. A man does not live on this Earth to be happy or to be honest only - he has to do great things for humanity, achieve the generosity of the spirit and rise above the banality where most of the people are drowning and wasting their days.
-- Irving Stone

#Men #People #Generosity

Religion will never show the way.
-- Irving Stone

#Way #Shows

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

#Artist #Ideas #Hours

Sometimes men are generous and forgiving, sometimes angry and blind.
-- Irving Stone

#Men #Forgiving #Sometimes

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.
-- Irving Stone

#Religious #Art #Believe

Reading has always been the largest and most irreplaceable pleasure for Vincent; reading about other people's successes and failures, joys and sufferings seemed to bury his own failures.
-- Irving Stone

#Reading #People #Joy

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

#Fall #Character #Personality

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

#Anger #Use #Fuel

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

#Alphabet

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

#Art #Book #Art Is

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.
-- Irving Stone

#Girl #Wall #Air

I cannot draw a human figure if I don't know the order of his bones, muscles or tendons. Same is that I cannot draw a human face if I don't know what's going on his mind and heart. In order to paint life one must understand not only anatomy, but what people feel and think about the world they live in. The painter who knows his own craft and nothing else will turn out to be a very superficial artist.
-- Irving Stone

#Heart #Thinking #Artist

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

#Artist #Would Be #Miserable

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

#Hours #Darkest Hour #Abandon

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

#Drawing #Stories #Lines

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.
-- Irving Stone

#Sweet #Iron #People

You cannot be firmly certain about anything. You can only have enough courage and strength to do what you consider to be right. Maybe it turns out that was wrong, but still you would have done his, and it is most important.
-- Irving Stone

#Important #Done #Enough

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

#Sometimes #Vans #Angry

Nature always resists the artist at the beginning.
-- Irving Stone

#Artist

Listen, my friend, all forms that exist in God's universe can be found in the human figure. A man's body and face can tell everything he represents. So how could I ever exhaust my interest in it?
-- Irving Stone

#Men #Faces #Body

God did not create us to abandon us.
-- Irving Stone

#Abandon

Normal people do not create art.
-- Irving Stone

#Art #People #Normal

There's no love without pain.
-- Irving Stone

#Pain #Without Pain

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

#Poison #Antidote

If it is noticed that much of my outside work concerns itelf with libraries, there is an extremely good reason for this. I think that the better part of my education, almost as important as that secured in the schools and the universities, came from libraries.
-- Irving Stone

#School #Thinking #Important

When I have trouble writing, I step outside my studio into the garden and pull weeds until my mind clears--I find weeding to be the best therapy there is for writer's block.
-- Irving Stone

#Weed #Block #Writing

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

#Painting #Someday #Louvre

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

#Beautiful #Morning #Paris

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

#Artist #Mediocrity #Rise Above

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.'
-- Irving Stone

#Self #Design #Canvas

How difficult it is to be simple.
-- Irving Stone

#Simple #Difficult

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

#Light #Heat #Fierce

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

#Easy #Vans #Hard Things

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

#Strength #Men #World

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

#Art #Men #Desire

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

#Art #Liquid #Enough

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.
-- Irving Stone

#Art #Wine #Winter

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
-- Irving Stone

#Mind #Lap #Soup

After all, the world is still great.
-- Irving Stone

#World #Stills

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

#Loneliness #Kind #Prison

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

#Love Life #Bread

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

#Artist #Vans

...that horrible moment of suspense when the artist shows one of his creations to strange eyes for the first time.
-- Irving Stone

#Art #Eye #Suspense

From out of pain, beauty.
-- Irving Stone

#Beauty #Pain

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

#Life #Patterns #Conclusion

... 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.
-- Irving Stone

#Painting #Canvas #Reason

How can a young person learn whether he chose the correct way? He thinks he has a special idea, and then he discovers that he is completely inappropriate for it.
-- Irving Stone

#Thinking #Ideas #Special

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

#Beautiful #Real #Artist