Impressions Quotes
More Impressions Quotes
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 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).
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
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
A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life.
Saul Bellow— 1976 Nobel prize lecture, Stockholm,12 Dec.
History never exactly repeats itself, but it does some rather good impressions.
john dean— Comparing the presidential styles of Richard Nixon and George W Bush. Quoted in Worse than Watergate (2004).
I am interested in entertaining people, in bringing pleasure, particularly laughter, to others, rather than being concerned with "expressing" myself with obscure creative impressions.
walt disney— Quoted in "The man behind 'The Magic Kingdom'" in The Gazette [Colorado Springs (7 May 2005)]
The Führer confirms my impressions of yesterday. He would like an understanding with Great Britain. He knows that war with the British will be hard and bloody, and knows also that people everywhere today are averse to bloodshed.
franz halder— July 14, 1940 diary entry, quoted in "Their Finest Hour" - Page 230 - by Winston Churchill - History - 1986
First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not unfrequently) to our cost when we have been wheedled out of them by plausible professions or actions. A man's look is the work of years, it is stamped on his countenance by the events of his whole life, nay, more, by the hand of nature, and it is not to be got rid of easily.
william hazlitt— "On the Knowledge of Character"
The Australia of her book is not merely a setting for cricket but a place of interest, of fun and of new impressions
margaret hughes— John Arlott, review of The Long Hop; quoted in Times obituary
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
What we have to do is to be forever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions.
walter pater— Conclusion
We men do nothing but lie and make ourselves important. Speech was invented for the purpose of magnifying all of our sensations and impressions — perhaps so that we could believe in them.
Miguel de Unamuno— Niebla (Mist) (1914)
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 (1976-12-12).
"Bosh," he said, "On what else is the whole world run but immediate impressions? What is more practical? My friend, the philosophy of this world may be founded on facts, but its business is run on spiritual impressions and atmospheres."
gilbert keith chesterton— The Club of Queer Trades (1905) Ch. 2 "The Painful Fall of a Great Reputation"
It is sometimes difficult to get rid of first impressions.
kenyon, lloyd, 1st baron kenyon— Withnell v. Gartham (1795), 6 T. R. 396.
When I call to mind my earliest impressions, I wonder whether the process ordinarily referred to as growing up is not actually a process of growing down; whether experience, so much touted among adults as the thing children lack, is not actually a progressive dilution of the essentials by the trivialities of living.
aldo leopold— “Illinois and Iowa: Red Legs Kicking”, p. 120
The beauty or uncomeliness of many things, in good and ill breeding, will be better learnt, and make deeper impressions on them, in the examples of others, than from any rules or instructions can be given about them.
john locke— Sec. 82 (Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693))
In order to judge of the form to be given to this institution [the Senate], it will be proper to take a view of the ends to be served by it. These were, first, to protect the people against their rulers, secondly, to protect the people against the transient impressions into which they themselves might be led.
james madison— Debates in the Constitutional Convention, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (June 26, 1787) Journal of the Federal Convention, ed. E. H. Scott (1893), pp. 241–42.
Our words tend to conceal what is private and particular in our impressions, and to make us believe that different people live in a common world to a greater extent than is in fact the case.
bertrand russell— An Outline of Philosophy Ch.15 The Nature of our Knowledge of Physics (1927)
Titles of honour are like the impressions on coin which add no value to gold and silver, but only render brass current.
Laurence Sterne— Laurence Sterne, Koran, Part II.
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 (1976-12-12).
I insist upon ‘doing it alone’... I have always worked better alone and from my own impressions.
— 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
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.
— Chapter XIX, paragraph 2, lines 1-6 (An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised))
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.
...the real origin and essence of the hypnotic condition, is the induction of a habit of abstraction or mental concentration , in which, as in reverie or spontaneous abstraction, the powers of the mind are so much engrossed with a single idea or train of thought , as, for the nonce, to render the individual unconscious of, or indifferently conscious to, all other ideas , impressions, or trains of thought. The hypnotic sleep, therefore, is the very antithesis or opposite mental and physical condition to that which precedes and accompanies common sleep...
— James Braid, in The Discovery of Hypnosis: The Complete Writings of James Braid, the Father ..., (2008)
In philosophy equally as in poetry it is the highest and most useful prerogative of genius to produce the strongest impressions of novelty, while it rescues admitted truths from the neglect caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge— Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection (1829), Aphorism 1
Gonzo: Hey, Kermit, are you busy?
Kermit: Yes, Gonzo, but I can give you my ear for a minute.
Gonzo: What would I do with your ear?
Kermit: [exasperated] Van Gogh impressions.
— The Muppet Show, with special guest Charles Aznavour, Season 1, Episode 9 (15 January 1977)
