We lived in a large wooden house, with one room succeeding another [Zadkine, recalling in this quote his childhood's days in Smolensk, Russia]. The house was at the end of a blind alley. On one side were a beautiful garden and an orchard. In the summer there was an atmosphere of fragrance and peace. A large room with three windows looked out into the courtyard. Bookshelves along the walls with books and more books; a black table and six ugly Viennese chairs, also black, and in the center of the bare, inhospitable table, a sort of vase in coloured plaster representing a hand holding a goblet. It was the only piece of sculpture in the house! (Ossip Zadkine)

We lived in a large wooden house, with one room succeeding another [Zadkine, recalling in this quote his childhood's days in Smolensk, Russia]. The house was at the end of a blind alley. On one side were a beautiful garden and an orchard. In the summer there was an atmosphere of fragrance and peace. A large room with three windows looked out into the courtyard. Bookshelves along the walls with books and more books; a black table and six ugly Viennese chairs, also black, and in the center of the bare, inhospitable table, a sort of vase in coloured plaster representing a hand holding a goblet. It was the only piece of sculpture in the house!

Ossip Zadkine

Related topics

alley atmosphere bare beautiful black blind bookshelf center courtyard end fragrance garden goblet hand holding house large orchard peace piece plaster quote room russia sculpture side six sort succeeding summer table three ugly vase viennese coloured days recalling representing smolensk

Related quotes

The sort of life which I had previous to this popular success was one that required endurance, a life of clawing and scratching along a sheer surface and holding on tight with raw fingers to every inch of rock higher than the one caught hold of before, but it was a good life because it was the sort of life for which the human organism is created. I was not aware of how much vital energy had gone into this struggle until the struggle was removed. I was out on a level plateau with my arm still thrashing and my lungs still grabbing at air that no longer resisted. This was security at last. I sat down and looked about me and was suddenly very depressed.

Tennessee Williams

The terms "black box" and "white box" are convenient and figurative expressions of not very well determined usage. I shall understand by a black box a piece of apparatus, such as four-terminal networks with two input and two output terminals, which performs a definite operation on the present and past of the input potential, but for which we do not necessarily have any information of the structure by which this operation is performed. On the other hand, a white box will be similar network in which we have built in the relation between input and output potentials in accordance with a definite structural plan for securing a previously determined input-output relation.

Norbert Wiener

There was never a time when the world began, because it goes round and round like a circle, and there is no place on a circle where it begins. Look at my watch, which tells the time; it goes round, and so the world repeats itself again and again. But just as the hour-hand of the watch goes up to twelve and down to six, so, too, there is day and night, waking and sleeping, living and dying, summer and winter. You can't have any one of these without the other, because you wouldn't be able to know what black is unless you had seen it side-by-side with white, or white unless side-by-side with black.

Alan Watts

I am going on very well with my pictures... the park [ Wivenhoe Park ] is the most forward - the great difficulty has been to get so much in as they wanted (his client, the Slater-Rebows) to make them acquainted with the scene - on my left is a grotto with some elms - at the head of a piece of water - in the center is the house over a beautifull wood and very far to the right is a Deer House - what it was necessary to add. So that my view comprehended to many degrees - but to day I got over the difficulty and I begin to like it 'myself'... I live in the park and Mrs. Rebow says I am very unsociable.

John Constable

I had the greatest pleasure of listening to Gloria Estefan's lecture on "Life, Art and Spirituality" at the Graham Center of Florida International University today. It was a great experieince. She is such a wonderful, amazing woman, and a great inspiration. I believe that everyone who attended her lecture today was blown away by her sincerity, kind words and her sense of humor... yes, because even in the darkest days of her life, there was a little room for humor. She spoke of the power of prayer, and how different this world would be if we were to stop the violence, and the hating, and the wars between us.

Gloria Estefan