Masterpiece Quotes - Page 14

• Don't hire a master to paint you a masterpiece and then assign a roomful of schoolboy artists to look over his shoulder and make suggestions.

  Robert Townsend

  Artist, Suggestions, Looks

  Robert Townsend (1970). “Up The Organization”

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• These days it seems like any idiot with a laptop computer can churn out a business book and make a few bucks. That's certainly what I'm hoping. It would be a real letdown if the trend changed before this masterpiece goes to print.

  Scott Adams

  Real, Book, Trends

  Scott Adams (1996). “The Dilbert principle: a cubicle's-eye view of bosses, meetings, management fads & other workplace afflictions”

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• It is through Christianity that Judaism has really conquered the world. Christianity is the masterpiece of Judaism.

  Ernest Renan

  World, Christianity, Judaism

  Ernest Renan, Joseph Henry Allen, Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer (1896). “History of the People of Israel ...: Period of Jewish independence and Judea under Roman rule. 1895”

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• The love of a father is one of nature's greatest masterpieces.

  Helen Lowrie Marshall

  Father

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• By Cunning & Craft is a masterpiece of writing about writing. If, like Scheherazade, you had to spin out a story under threat of death, this is the how-to book to read. It's filled with thoughtful, nuanced advice from a teacher/writer who actually writes, and writes beautifully and with great humor. The list of rejected stories is worth the price of the whole book.

  Nora Gallagher

  Teacher, Book, Writing

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• I would love to be able to write a tragedy in my imagination--it would turn into a masterpiece.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Writing, Imagination, Tragedy

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• I can't remember coming across a more precise evocation of innocence lost since Golding's The Lord of the Flies. With The Death of Sweet Mister, Daniel Woodrell has written his masterpiece-spare, dark, and incandescently beautiful. It broke my heart.

  Dennis Lehane

  Beautiful, Sweet, Heart

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• Once in a rare while, you get to read a story of such breathtaking beauty and intelligence that you remember why you love to read. The Anatomy Lesson is just such a novel. In stunning prose, Nina Siegal animates Rembrandt's first masterpiece, spinning a deeply affecting tale of love, loss and redemption as she reveals the secrets of the human soul. It is a gorgeous literary page turner of immense sympathy and elegance, equal in artistic lan to its inspiration. Brava!

  Robin Oliveira

  Inspiration, Loss, Soul

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• Literary gentlemen, editors, and critics think that they know how to write, because they have studied grammar and rhetoric; but they are egregiously mistaken. The art of composition is as simple as the discharge of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply an infinitely greater force behind them.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Art, Writing, Simple

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.389, Penguin

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• Director Michelle MacLaren is the John Cage of this malevolent silence, able to wield it as precisely as a pointillist with a paintbrush. And with 'To'hajiilee,' the final episode of Breaking Bad she'll ever direct, she has painted her masterpiece. Under the unblinking eye of her relentless camera, this was television not as entertainment but as endurance. It was agonizing, nauseating, unbearable. I loved every minute but hated every second. I couldn't wait for it to be over but I never wanted it to end. And I especially never wanted it to end like that.

  Andy Greenwald

  Eye, Waiting, Silence

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• Of lower states, of acts of routine and sense, we can tell somewhat; but the masterpieces of God, the total growths and universalmovements of the soul, he hideth; they are incalculable. I can know that truth is divine and helpful; but how it shall help me I can have no guess, for so to be is the sole inlet of so to know.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Knowledge, Soul, Growth

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1391, Delphi Classics

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• Religion finds the love of happiness and the principles of duty separated in us; and its mission, its masterpiece, is to reunite them.

  Alexandre Vinet

  Religion, Principles, Missions

  Alexandre Rodolphe Vinet (1865). “Outlines of Philosophy and Literature”, p.129

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• Every human being is a universe within themselves. Your mother and father participated with God to create a soul who would never cease to exist. Your parents, as co-creators, supplied the stuff, genetics and more, uniquely combined to form a masterpiece, not flawless but still astounding; and we took from their hands what they brought to us, submitting to their timing and history and added what only we could bring to them -- life. You were conceived, a living wonder who exploded into being.

  William P. Young

  Mother, Father, Hands

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• Jesus Tempted in the Wilderness is Adophe Monod at his best. It is a masterpiece, bringing together profound comfort, realistic understanding, practical wisdom, and heavenly glory for every believer and, in a special way, for those who are preparing for or are working directly in some ministry. By the Spirit's grace, if you digest Monod's book slowly, seriously, and prayerfully, you will make great spiritual gain as you engage in holy warfare against your own temptations and lusts. You really must read this book.

  Joel Beeke

  Spiritual, Jesus, Book

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• I am obsessed by the idea of silence. I went through an entire library studying art, artists and their critics, philosophers, too, on the meaning and significance of the color white. I dreamed of white birds and white bears. I thought about the white pages of my mother's journals. I became enthralled with John Cage and his work, 4'33”, his masterpiece of ambient sound. Rauschenberg, too. And then at some point I let go. What sticks to the soul is what gets placed on the page. Maybe that's the unknown part, the mystery, the power of the empty page.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Letting Go, Mother, Art

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• It is when their age of passions is past that great men produce their masterpieces, just as it is after volcanic eruptions that the soil is most fertile.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Passion, Past, Men

  Sébastien-Roch-Nicolas Chamfort (1902). “The Cynic's Breviary: Maxims and Anecdotes from Nicolas de Chamfort”

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• The great and glorious masterpiece of men is to live to the point. All other things-to reign, to hoard, to build-are, at most, but inconsiderable props and appendages.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Reign, Props

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• Under the microscope, I found that snowflakes were miracles of beauty; and it seemed a shame that this beauty should not be seen and appreciated by others. Every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever repeated., When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind.

  Wilson Bentley

  Design, Miracle, Forever

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• Horror hostess, bondage goddess, Charles Addams cartoon comes to life, Vampire was every first-generation fanboy's wet dream. Scott Poole takes us on an unforgettable ride through the overlapping underworlds of B&D magazines, Hollywood noir, and early political liberation movements that inspired actress Maila Nurmi to challenge a postwar culture bent on stifling women's choices, bodies, and desires. This book is a subversive masterpiece.

  Sheri Holman

  Dream, Book, Political

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• Susan Bordo’s Unbearable Weight is a masterpiece of complex an nuanced thinking not only about a significant problem that faces women but about our culture. A very valuable book.

  Susan Griffin

  Book, Thinking, Unbearable

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• The book is a form in which some of the greatest masterpieces that mankind has ever achieved are expressed.

  David Gelernter

  Book, Form, Mankind

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

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• Painting seems an old man's business. After a certain time you're out of it, and you just paint masterpieces.

  Alex Katz

  Men, Painting, Masters

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• When we teach a child to sing or play the flute, we teach her how to listen. When we teach her to draw, we teach her to see. When we teach a child to dance, we teach him about his body and about space, and when he acts on a stage, he learns about character and motivation. When we teach a child design, we reveal the geometry of the world. When we teach children about the folk and traditional arts and the great masterpieces of the world, we teach them to celebrate their roots and find their own place in history.

  Jane Alexander

  Art, Motivation, Children

  Jane Alexander (2007). “Command Performance: An Actress in the Theater of Politics”, p.322, Da Capo Press

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• The sincere love of books has nothing to do with cleverness or stupidity any more than any other sincere love. It is a quality of character, a freshness, a power of pleasure, a power of faith. A silly person may delight in reading masterpieces just as a silly person may delight in picking flowers. A fool may be in love with a poet as he may be in love with a woman.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Flower, Silly, Book

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• composition is notation of distortion of what composers think they've heard before. Masterpieces are marvelous misquotations.

  Ned Rorem

  Thinking, Distortion, Composer

  Ned Rorem (2013). “The Paris Diary & The New York Diary: 1951–1961”, p.53, Open Road Media

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