Isadora Duncan quotes - page 2

My inspiration has been drawn from trees, from waves, from clouds, from the sympathies that exist between passion and the storm, between gentleness and the soft breeze, and the like, and I always endeavour to put into my movements a little of that divine continuity which gives to the whole of nature its beauty and its life. (Isadora Duncan)
To seek in nature the fairest forms and to find the movement which expresses the soul of these forms - this is the art of the dancer.
Isadora Duncan
I could have played the part of Saint Joan. I ought to have played it.
Isadora Duncan
The movement of the waves, of winds, of the earth is ever in the same lasting harmony. We do not stand on the beach and inquire of the ocean what was its movement of the past and what will be its movement of the future. We realize that the movement peculiar to its nature is eternal to its nature.
Isadora Duncan
The harmony of music exists equally with the harmony of movement in nature. Man has not invented the harmony of music. It is one of the underlying principles of life.
Isadora Duncan
Most human beings today waste some 25 to 30 years of their lives before they break through the actual and conventional lies which surround them.
Isadora Duncan
All my life I have struggled to make one authentic gesture.
Isadora Duncan
The only dance masters I could have were Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Walt Whitman and Nietzsche.
Isadora Duncan
I finally discovered the source of all movement, the unity from which all diversities of movement are born.
Isadora Duncan
Virtuous people are simply those who have. . . not been tempted sufficiently, because they live in a vegetative state, or because their purposes are so concentrated in one direction that they have not had the leisure to glance around them.
Isadora Duncan
I had learned to have a perfect nausea for the theatre the continual repetition of the same words and the same gestures, night after night, and the caprices, the way of looking at life, and the entire rigmarole disgusted me. (Isadora Duncan)
The artist is the only lover he alone has the pure vision of beauty, and love is the vision of the soul when it is permitted to gaze upon immortal beauty.
Isadora Duncan
I could have played the part of Saint Joan. I ought to have played it. I have the ample figure, the hardy physique of a farm-servant. Joan was a buxom creature. Yet she is always played by thin little actresses.
Isadora Duncan
And here I want to avoid a misunderstanding that might easily arise. From what I have said you might conclude that my intention is to return to the dances of the old Greeks, or that I think that the dance of the future will be a revival of the antique dances or even of those of the primitive tribes. No, the dance of the future will be a new movement, a consequence of the entire evolution which mankind has passed through. To return to the dances of the Greeks would be as impossible as it is unnecessary. We are not Greeks and therefore cannot dance Greek dances.
Isadora Duncan