I was born undisciplined. Never, even as a child, could I be made to obey a set rule. What little I know I learned at home. School was always like a prison to me, I could never bring myself to stay there, even four hours a day, when the sun was shining and the sea was so tempting, and it was such fun scrambling over cliffs and paddling in the shallows. Such, to the great despair of my parents, was the unruly but healthy life I lived until I was fourteen or fifteen. In the meantime I somehow picked up the rudiments of reading, writing and arithmetic, with a smattering of spelling. And there my schooling ended. It never worried me very much because I always had plenty of amusements on the side. I doodled in the margins of my books, I decorated our blue copy paper with ultra-fantastic drawings, and I drew the faces and profiles of my schoolmasters as outrageously as I could, distorting them out of all recognition.
Claude MonetRelated topics
arithmetic born blue child copy day despair drew fifteen four fourteen fun great home hours life meantime paddling paper plenty prison reading recognition rule school schooling scrambling sea set shining side smattering spelling stay sun tempting worry writing rudiments cliffs shallowsRelated quotes
I think it was my grandmother who gave me my ease in being a woman. She was unquestionably feminine - small and dainty and pretty and wholly without masculine protest or feminist aggrievement. She had gone to college when this was a very unusual thing for a girl to do, she had a very firm grasp of anything she paid attention to, she had married and had a child, and she a career of her own. All this was true of my mother as well. But my mother was filled with passionate resentment about the condition of women, as perhaps my grandmother might have been had my grandfather lived and had she borne five children and had little opportunity to use her special gifts and training. As it was, the two women I knew best were mothers and had professional training. So I had no reason to doubt that brains were suitable for a woman. And as I had my father's kind of mind - which was also his mother's - I learned that the mind is not sex-typed.
Margaret Mead
The big artist does not sit down monkey like & copy a coal scuttle or an ugly old woman like some Dutch painters have done nor a dungpile, but he keeps a sharp eye on Nature & steals her tools. He learns what she does with light the big tool & then colour then form and appropriates them to his own use. Then he's got a canoe of his own smaller than Nature's but big enough for every purpose except to paint the midday sun which is not beautiful at all. It is plenty strong enough though to make midday sunlight or the setting sun if you know how to handle it. With this canoe he can sail parallel to Nature's sailing. He will soon be sailing only where he wants to selecting nice little coves & shady shores or storms to his own liking, but if ever he thinks he can sail another fashion from Nature or make a better shaped boat he'll capsize or stick in the mud & nobody will buy his pictures or sail with him in his old tub.
Thomas Eakins
You know the answers, but just between ourselves, that sketch smells a bit. It's sloppy.”
"I never did have any artistic talent,” Art said defensively. "I'd rather take a photograph any day.”
"You've taken too many photographs, maybe. As for artistic talent, I haven't any either, but I learned to sketch. Look, Art-the rest of you guys get this, too-if you can't sketch, you can't see. If you really see what you're looking at, you can put it down on paper, accurately. If you really remember what you have looked at, you can sketch it accurately from memory.”
"But the lines don't go where I intend them to.”
"A pencil will go where you push it. It hasn't any life of its own. The answer is practice and more practice and thinking about what you are looking at. All of you lugs want to be scientists. Well, the ability to sketch accurately is as necessary to a scientist as his slipstick. More necessary, you can get along without a slide rule.
Robert A. Heinlein
When I was born 20.6. [18]87, I was influenced by Picasso to cry. When I could walk and speak I still stood under Picasso's influence and said to my mother: 'Tom' or 'Happening', meaning the entrances of the canal under the street. My lyrical time was when I lived in the Violet Street. I never saw a violet. That was my influence by Matisse because when he painted rose I did not paint violet. As a boy of ten I stood under Mondrian's influence and built little houses with little bricks. Afterwards I stood under the influence of the Surrealists... I never stood under the influence of Dadaism because whereas the Dadaist created Spiegel-dadaismus (Mirror-Dada) on the Zurich Lake, I created MERZ on the Leine-river, under the influence of Rembrandt. Time went on, and when Hans Arp made concrete Art, I stayed Abstract. Now I do concrete Art, and Marcel Duchamp went over to the Surrealists.... and at all I have much fun about Art.
Kurt Schwitters
After four years of sitting through lectures, I have a feeling you're not in the mood for another one. What I have learned about graduation speeches is that they're too long and rarely remembered. So I'll keep this short. I just can't attest to how memorable it will be. I've also learned that it's important to refer to someone associated with the University. So I picked one, an SMU trustee, who by the way is not here, Reverend Mark Craig. Now, I asked Mark to deliver the sermon at the First United Methodist Church in Austin before my second inauguration as Governor of Texas. I still remember his Fort Worth twang as he talked about Moses. God called Moses to action, and Moses repeatedly found excuses not to act. 'Who am I that I should go to Pharoah, and bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt? Oh, my Lord, I pray, send some other person. I have sheep to tend. And the people won't believe me. I'm not a very good speaker'.
George W. Bush
