Style Quotes - Page 4

• We know much of a writer by his style. An open and imperious disposition is shown in short sentences, direct and energetic. A secretive and proud mind is cold and obscure in style. An affectionate and imaginative nature pours out luxuriantly, and blossoms all over with ornament.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Mind, Ornaments, Proud

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• I like having my own style; love my work or hate my work, it's my own.

  Don Watson

  Hate, Working It, My Own

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• To write a genuine familiar or truly English style is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation, who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes.

  William Hazlitt

  Writing, Choices, Ease

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1270, Delphi Classics

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• Style is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.

  Robert Frost

  Moving, Circles, Mind

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• Artists should imprint their handwriting on the work, because if they give a piece to a fabrication studio, the craftsmen there may actually be too perfect; you don't see the quirks that the artist would have developed.

  Grayson Perry

  Artist, Giving, Perfect

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• One tires of a page of which every sentence sparkles with points, of a sentimentalist who is always pumping the tears from his eyes or your own.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Eye, Tears, Pages

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1853). “The English humourists of the eighteenth century: a series of lectures”, p.276

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• A Classical style... is the syllogism of art, the only legitimate process from one world to another. Classicism is not the manner of any fixed age or of any fixed country; it is a constant state of the artistic mind. It is a temper of security and satisfaction and patience.

  James Joyce

  Country, Art, Mind

  James Joyce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of James Joyce (Illustrated)”, p.1542, Delphi Classics

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• What is line? It is life. A line must live at each point along its course in such a way that the artist's presence makes itself felt above that of the model... With the writer, line takes precedence over form and content. It runs through the words he assembles. It strikes a continuous note unperceived by ear or eye. It is, in a way, the soul's style, and if the line ceases to have a life of its own, if it only describes an arabesque, the soul is missing and the writing dies.

  Jean Cocteau

  Running, Writing, Eye

  "The Difficulty of Being". Book by Jean Cocteau, 1947.

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• I don't know if I'm an impressionist or an expressionist. You can call me an American first... I've been labeled doing neimanism, so that's what it is, I guess.

  LeRoy Neiman

  Firsts, Call Me, Knows

  "LeRoy Neiman dies aged 91", www.theguardian.com. June 20, 2012.

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• As it is a great point of art, when our matter requires it, to enlarge and veer out all sail, so to take it in and contract it is of no less praise when the argument doth ask it.

  Ben Jonson

  Art, Matter, Argument

  Ben Jonson (1756). “Underwoods. Timber; or, Discoveries made upon men and matter. Horace, Of the art of poetry [with an English translation by Jonson]. The English grammar. Leges convivales, rules for the Tavern Academy. The case is altered”, p.133

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• To do a dull thing with style-now that's what I call art.

  Charles Bukowski

  Life, Art, Thought Provoking

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• Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express; it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it.

  William Hazlitt

  Writing, Simplicity, Tasks

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1270, Delphi Classics

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• The primitive style makes nature look like stage scenery.

  E. J. Hughes

  Looks, Stage, Scenery

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• I cannot now change my style, which I acquired, as you can imagine, by dint of labour.

  Henri Rousseau

  Imagine, Labour

  Henri Rousseau, Roger Shattuck, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.), Galeries nationales du Grand Palais (France) (1985). “Henri Rousseau: essays”, Museum of Modern Art ; Boston : Distributed by New York Graphic Society Books

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• He who thinks much says but little in proportion to his thoughts. He selects that language which will convey his ideas in the most explicit and direct manner. He tries to compress as much thought as possible into a few words. On the contrary, the man who talks everlastingly and promiscuously, who seems to have an exhaustless magazine of sound, crowds so many words into his thoughts that he always obscures, and very frequently conceals them.

  Washington Irving

  Men, Thinking, Ideas

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• The science of style as an organ of thought, of style in relation to the ideas and feelings, might be called the organology of style.

  Thomas de Quincey

  Ideas, Feelings, Might

  Thomas De Quincey (1861). “Letters on Self-Education, with hints on style, and dialogues on political economy”, p.201

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• Many a fine style has evolved from a decent handicap.

  Robert Genn

  Handicaps, Fine, Decent

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• I want to be the first lady to land a quadruple jump in competition. As I grow older, I know that my skating style will develop and mature.

  Sasha Cohen

  Sports, Land, Competition

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• The secret of force in writing lies not so much in the pedigree of nouns and adjectives and verbs, as in having something that you believe in to say, and making the parts of speech vividly conscious of it.

  James Russell Lowell

  Lying, Believe, Writing

  James Russell Lowell (1870). “Among my Books, etc”, p.162

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• The voice will always be heard, even if the song is very different.

  Scott Kahn

  Song, Voice, Different

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• While it is emotion that gives an impulse to the landscape painter, it is his style that inspires the critic's praise, and his subject that inveigles the untutored beholder.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Giving, Inspire, Landscape

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• It is said that my art has some typically Nordic features: the curving lines, the convolutions, the magical masks and staring eyes that appear in myths and folk art. This may be. My interest in the dynamics of Jugend style probably also comes into it.

  Asger Jorn

  Art, Eye, Dynamics

  Asger Jorn, Per Hovdenakk, Stine Høholt, Arken museum for moderne kunst (Ishøj, Denmark), Cobra Museum voor Moderne Kunst (Amstelveen, Netherlands) (2002). “Asger Jorn”

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• I am no longer concerned with sensation and innovation, but with the perfection of my style.

  Yves Saint Laurent

  Perfection, Innovation, Concerned

  Yves Saint Laurent (1998). “Yves Saint Laurent and Fashion Photography”, Te Neues Publishing Group

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• Such labour'd nothings, in so strange a style, Amaze th' unlearn'd and make the learned smile.

  Alexander Pope

  Learning, Strange, Labour

  Alexander Pope (1873). “The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope Edited with Notes and Introductory Memoir by Adolphus William Ward”, p.57

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• He has found his style, when he cannot do otherwise.

  Paul Klee

  Art, Artistic Ability, Found

  Paul Klee (2012). “Paul Klee”, p.98, Parkstone International

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