Impressions Quotes
More Impressions Quotes
The idea (for the painting ‘Room in New York’, 1932, ed.) had been in my mind a long time before I painted it. It was suggested by glimpses of lighted interiors seen as I walked along city streets at night, probably near the district where I live (Washington Square, New York, fh) although it’s no particular street or house, but is really a synthesis of many impressions.
Edward Hopper— 'Such a Life'’, in Life 102, August 1935, p. 48
Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter- writing.
george eliot— Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 8 June 1856. Collected in The George Eliot Letters, edited by G. S. Haight (1954), volume 2.
The mystical trend of our time, which shows itself particularly in the rampant growth of the so-called Theosophy and Spiritualism, is for me no more than a symptom of weakness and confusion. Since our inner experiences consist of reproductions, and combinations of sensory impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seem to me to be empty and devoid of meaning.
— Albert Einstein, in Albert Einstein, The Human Side: Glimpses from His Archives, p.40
The thing depicted is less stationary, even the object in itself is less discernible than it used to be. A landscape broken into and traversed in a car or an express train losesindescriptivevaluebut gainsinsynthetic value; the window of the railroad carriage or the windshield of the car, combined withthespeed at whichyou aretraveling, have changed the familiar look of things. Modern man registers one hundred times more impressions than did an eighteenth century artist.
Fernand Le ger— Quoted in D Cooper The Cubist Epoch (1970).
I am imbued with two deep impressions; the first, that science knows no country; the second, which seems to contradict the first, although it is really a direct consequence of it – that science is the highest personification of the nation. Science knows no country because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence.
Louis Pasteur— Toast at the banquet of the International Congress of Sericulture (translated by Rene Dubois, 1876).
All violent feelings?produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the'Pathetic Fallacy'.
john ruskin— 1856 Modern Painters, vol.3, pt.4, ch.12.
One must let the play happen to one; one must let the mind loose to respond as it will, to receive impressions, to sense rather than know, to gather rather than immediately understand.
edward albee— On his play Tiny Alice, in National Observer (5 April 1965)
A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life. It tells us that for every human being there is a diversity of existences, that the single existence is itself an illusion in part, that these many existences signify something, tend to something, fulfill something; it promises us meaning, harmony, and even justice.
Saul Bellow— Nobel Prize lecture (12 December 1976)
Early impressions are hard to eradicate from the mind. When once wool has been dyed purple, who can restore it to its previous whiteness?
jerome— Letter 107 (Sourced)
First impressions of mediaeval life are usually coloured by the courtly romances of Malory and his later refiners. Chaucer brings us down to reality, but his people belong to a prosperous middle-class world, on holiday and in holiday mood. Piers Plowman stands alone as a revelation of the ignorance and misery of the lower classes, whose multiplied grievances came to a head in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.
william langland— Kenneth Sisam Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose (Oxford, 1921) p. 78.
The greatest talents have been frequently misapplied and have produced evil proportionate to the extent of their powers. Both reason and revelation seem to assure us that such minds will be condemned to eternal death, but while on earth, these vicious instruments performed their part in the great mass of impressions, by the disgust and abhorrence which they excited.
thomas malthus— Chapter XIX, paragraph 2, lines 1-6
I insist upon ‘doing it alone’... I have always worked better alone and from my own impressions.
Claude Monet— Claude Monet in letter to his art-buyer Durand-Ruel in Paris, 1884; Quoted in: Discovering Art, – The life time and work of the World’s greatest Artists - 'MONET', K.E. Sullivan, Brockhamptonpress, London 2004, p. 51 : Painting in Northern Italy, on the edge of the Mediterranean
Collect impressions. Don’t be in a hurry to write them down. Because that’s something music can do better than painting: it can centralise variations of colour and light within a single picture a truth generally ignored, obvious as it is.
claude debussy— Debussy in a letter to his pupil Raoul Bardac (1906)
What seems interesting to me is to reproduce in the figurative representation of an object the whole complex system of impressions we receive in the normal course of everyday life, the way this affects our feelings and the shape it takes in our memory; and it is to this that I have always applied myself.
jean dubuffet— Prospectus et tous écrits suivants, Vol. II, Jean Dubuffet, Gallimard, Paris 1967, p. 103
Essays, entitled critical, are epistles addressed to the public, through which the mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions.
margaret fuller— "A Short Essay on Critics" in Art, Literature and the Drama (1858).
Our activity should consist in placing ourselves in a state of susceptibility to Divine impressions, and pliability to all the operations of the Eternal Word.
jeanne marie bouvier de la motte guyon— P. 193. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
Yes, I know , we are merely empty forms of matter, but we are indeed sublime in having invented God and our soul. So sublime, my friend, that I want to gaze upon matter, fully conscious that it exists, and yet launching itself madly into Dream, despite its knowl edge that Dream has no existence, extolling the Soul and all the divine impressions of that kind which have collected within us from the beginning of time and proclaiming, in the face of the Void which is truth, these glorious lies!
stéphane mallarmé— Letter to Henri Cazalis (April 1866), published in Selected Letters of Stéphane Mallarmé (1988), p. 60
Death, a stopping of impressions through the senses, and of the pulling of the cords of motion, and of the ways of thought, and of service to the flesh.
marcus aurelius— VI, 28. (Book VI)
The mind of man can never be wholly barren. Through our whole lives we are subject to successive impressions; for, either new ideas are continually flowing in, or traces of the old ones are marked deeper. If, therefore, you be not acquiring good principles be assured that you are acquiring bad ones; if you be not forming virtuous habits you are, how insensibly soever to yourselves, forming vicious ones…
joseph priestley— Vol. I : The Dedication (March 1772)
Through such impressions one gathers oneself, wins oneself back from the exacting multiplicity, which speaks and chatters there (and how talkative it is!), and one slowly learns to recognize the very few Things in which something eternal endures that one can love and something solitary that one can gently take part in.
Rainer Maria Rilke— About RomeLetter Five (29 October 1903)
The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.
john ruskin— Volume III
All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the "Pathetic Fallacy."
john ruskin— Volume III, part IV, chapter XII (1856).
It seems to me, when I see nature, that I see it ready made, completely written but then, try to do it! All this proves that one must think of nothing but them [impressions]; it is by dint of observation and reflection that one makes discoveries.
— Claude Monet in 1864 letter to Frédéric Bazille from Honfleur, July 15, 1864; As cited in: Joyce Medina (1995) Cezanne and Modernism: The Poetics of Painting. p. 60
We must watch over pious impressions, and cultivate them, or they will never become vigorous and enduring.
— William Ellery Channing, p. 454. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
Our activity should consist in placing ourselves in a state of susceptibility to Divine impressions, and pliability to all the operations of the Eternal Word .
— Madame Guyon, p. 193. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
The mind is like a sheet of white paper in this, that the impressions it receives the oftenest, and retains the longest, are black ones.
— J. C. and A. W. Hare, Guesses at Truth.
impressions are like pearls ; ideas are like the string that turns the pearls into a necklace . The string is invisible , but it is not dispensable and cannot be broken.
— Mu Xin, in Mu Xin, a Chinese scholar lost in New York., mychinesebooks.com, 29 December 2013.
