Egon Friedell famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

Art is the subjective, preferential treatment of certain elements of reality; it selects and resets, distributes light and shade, omits and underlines, softens and emphasises.
-- Egon Friedell

#Art #Reality #Light
Electricity and magnetism are those forces of nature by which people who know nothing about electricity and magnetism can explain everything.
-- Egon Friedell

#People #Vegetarian #Electricity
Artists of all sorts remain youthful for so long, and in many cases attain a grand old age. The explanation is that they live in an almost permanent condition of stimulation and excitement.
-- Egon Friedell

#Artist #Long #Age
The artist's view of the world and mankind is that which seeks as far as possible to lose itself in its object, illuminating it not from the outside by some light foreign to it, but from within, deriving light from its own core.
-- Egon Friedell

#Artist #Light #Views
All knowing that goes beyond the immediate experience of the moment is a matter of faith.
-- Egon Friedell

#Faith #Knowing #Matter
the highest, the only reality, is ever at hand, but for the most part invisible. Genius makes it visible...
-- Egon Friedell

#Reality #Hands #Genius
Clothe an idea in words and it loses its freedom of movement.
-- Egon Friedell

#Ideas #Movement
God does not rule the world outwardly by gravitation and chemical affinity, but inwardly in the heart of man: as is your soul, so will the destiny be of the world in which you live and do.
-- Egon Friedell

#Heart #Destiny #Men
We can never see the world other than incompletely: deliberately to see it as incomplete is to create an artistic aspect.
-- Egon Friedell

#World #Artistic #Aspect

Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed. Having once experienced the mystery, plenitude, contradiction, and composure of a work of art, we afterward have a built-in resistance to the slogans and propaganda of oversimplification that have often contributed to the destruction of human life. Poetry is a verbal means to a nonverbal source. It is a motion to no-motion, to the still point of contemplation and deep realization.
The traditional difficulty of balancing the mechanical with the imaginative schools of photography still operates. In schools of photography meaningful art education is often lacking and on the strength of their technical ability alone students, deprived of a richer artistic training, are sent forth inculcated with the belief that they are creative photographers and artists. It is yet a fact that today, as in the past, the most inspiring and provocative works in photography come as much (and probably more) from those who are in the first place artists.
Get up now and go and find Robert Kilroy-Silk. Smile in a warm, friendly sort of way, then punch him on the nose. Now go and find Robert on television, despite my best endeavours, this is still relatively easy to do. Wait for a close-up, same smile, and punch him on the nose. If you followed the instructions carefully, you will have noticed a distinct difference. On the one hand, you were suffused with a sense of public-spirited righteousness; on the other, you're probably dribbling blood. That's the difference between reality in life and reality on television.
Reality is like a fruitcake; pretty enough to look at but with all sorts of nasty things lurking just beneath the surface.
One symptom of his (Hitler) being strangely at variance with reality, or the nature of things,was his gift for wearing inappropriate of ludicrous clothing...When he was supposed to be starting a militaristic revolution he was wearing evening dress and an ill-fitting black tailcoat...and his army medals.
There is a beautiful and life-enhancing alternative outlook that offers insight, consolation, inspiration and meaning, which has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with the best, most generous, most sympathetic understanding of human reality.
Socializing on the internet is to socializing what reality TV is to reality.
Reality is painful -- it's so much easier to keep doing stuff you know you're good at or else to pick something so hard there's no point at which it's obvious you're failing -- but it's impossible to get better without confronting it.
With its leaves so rich and heavy with elation and its crimson face made brighter with visions of divinity the shadow of a certain rose looks just like an angel eating light.
The purely righteous do not complain of the dark, but increase the light; they do not complain of evil, but increase justice; they do not complain of heresy, but increase faith; they do not complain of ignorance, but increase wisdom.

Egon Friedell famous quotes

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