concept quotes

If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.

-James Arthur Baldwin
  'Down at the Cross', in the NewYorker,17 Nov.

   A genuine invention in the realm of ideas must first emerge as an abstruse and even partial concept† At first blusha new idea appearstobe verycloseto insanity because to be new it must reverse important basic beliefs and assumptions which, in turn, have been institutionalized and are administered by one or another kind of priesthood with a vested interest in an old idea.

- Arthur Miller
  The Collected Plays,'Introduction, II'.

The grand manner consists of four elements: subject or theme, concept, structure, and style. The first requirement, fundamental to all the others, is that the subject and the narrative be grandiose, such as battles, heroic actions, and religious themes.

- Nicolas Poussin
Quoted in Giovanni Pietro Bellori Lives of the Modern Painters (1672).