Honoré de Balzac · 57 pages
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“Young man,' Porbus said, seeing Poussin stare open-mouthed at a picture, 'Don't look at the canvas too long, it will drive you to despair.”
― Honoré de Balzac, quote from La Obra Maestra Desconocida
“[Raphael's] great superiority is due to the instinctive sense which, in him, seems to desire to shatter form. Form is, in his figures, what it is in ourselves, an interpreter for the communication of ideas and sensations, an exhaustless source of poetic inspiration. Every figure is a world in itself, a portrait of which the original appeared in a sublime vision, in a flood of light, pointed to by an inward voice, laid bare by a divine finger which showed what the sources of expression had been in the whole past life of the subject.”
― Honoré de Balzac, quote from La Obra Maestra Desconocida
“You have wavered uncertainly between two systems, between drawing and coloring, between the painstaking phlegm, the stiff precision, of the old German masters, and the dazzling ardor, the happy fertility, of the Italian painters.”
― Honoré de Balzac, quote from La Obra Maestra Desconocida
“However," he continued, "this canvas is preferable to the paintings of that varlet Rubens, with his mountains of Flemish flesh sprinkled with vermilion, his waves of red hair and his medley of colors.”
― Honoré de Balzac, quote from La Obra Maestra Desconocida
“A line is a method of expressing the effect of light upon an object; but there are no lines in Nature, everything is solid. We draw by modeling, that is to say, that we disengage an object from its setting; the distribution of the light alone gives to a body the appearance by which we know it.”
― Honoré de Balzac, quote from La Obra Maestra Desconocida
“But, after all, too much knowledge, like ignorance, brings you to a negation.”
― Honoré de Balzac, quote from La Obra Maestra Desconocida
“[...]O que está faltando? Um nada, mas um nada que é tudo. Vocês têm a aparência da vida mas não expressam o seu excesso transbordante, esse não sei o quê que talvez seja a alma e que flutua enevoadamente sobre o invólucro[...]”
― Honoré de Balzac, quote from La Obra Maestra Desconocida
“As heirs to a legacy more than two centuries old, it is understandable why present-day Americans would take their own democracy for granted. A president freely chosen from a wide-open field of two men every four years; a Congress with a 99% incumbency rate; a Supreme Court comprised of nine politically appointed judges whose only oversight is the icy scythe of Death -- all these reveal a system fully capable of maintaining itself. But our perfect democracy, which neither needs nor particularly wants voters, is a rarity. It is important to remember there still exist other forms of government in the world today, and that dozens of foreign countries still long for a democracy such as ours to be imposed on them.”
― Jon Stewart, quote from America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
“He took a deep breath. I don't know what I'm supposed to do here. I don't know if I'm supposed to distract you. If I'm supposed to make you laugh, or if I'm supposed to be reassuring you. I have no idea what to do, so all I'm doing is just being here.”
― Tijan, quote from Fallen Crest Public
“You're at my table," Cormac whispers in my ear.
"My dream come true," I reply.
"I'm sorry?" he says in a voice that dares me to repeat myself.
"I said, lead the way.”
― Gennifer Albin, quote from Crewel
“Some people live a nothing life: the most important thing they ever do is die. Thank God for eccentrics! Take Gunner Octavian Neat. He would suddenly appear naked in a barrack room and say, “Does anybody know a good tailor?”, or “Gentlemen – I think there’s a thief in the battery.” He was the bane of the Regiment.”
― Spike Milligan, quote from Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall
“A woman ought to be honest with a man who shows interest in her.”
― Elisabeth Elliot, quote from Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ's Control
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