Howard Pyle Quotes

The stories of childhood leave an indelible impression, and their author always has a niche in the temple of memory from which the image is never cast out to be thrown on the rubbish heap of things that are outgrown and outlived.

Throw your heart into the picture and then jump in after it.

He who jumps for the moon and gets it not leaps higher than he who stoops for a penny in the mud.

It doth make a man better,' quoth Robin Hood, 'to bear of those noble men so long ago. When one doth list to such tales, his soul doth say, 'put by thy poor little likings and seek to do likewise.' Truly, one may not do as nobly one's self, but in the striving one is better.

Paint your picture by means of the lights. Lights define texture and color - shadows define form.

Young people, don't get the idea that you have an artistic temperament which must be humored. Don't believe you cannot do good work unless you feel in tile mood for it. That is all nonsense. I frequently have to force myself to make a start in the morning; but after a short while I find I can work. Only hard and regular work will bring success.

Art is the expression of those beauties and emotions that stir the human soul.

You who so plod amid serious things that you feel it shame to give yourself up even for a few short moments to mirth and joyousness in the land of Fancy; you who think that life hath not to do with innocent laughter that can harm no one; these pages are not for you.

What is done is done; and the cracked egg cannot be cured.

I think it likely that some of my pupils will reach unusual distinction.

Talk about life - but in your own way.

I put on my dream-cap one day and stepped into Wonderland.

I take back all I ever said about the Old Masters. They give great lessons.

Paint ideas, paint thought.

I am of use to the younger artists through the advice and criticism which I give them.

I should like to make myself free to all who care to attend my lectures.

You will have to scrutinize the model sharply to find the proportions - how the weight is supported, how each joint is functioning... Look for the color and tone and texture... how the light falls on the figure, especially the face.

Your subjects have had a history - try to reveal it in your picture.

Will you come with me, sweet Reader? I thank you. Give me your hand.

All the students have shown more advance in two months of summer study than they have in a year of ordinary instruction, largely due to their free and wholesome life in the open air.

My objective in teaching my pupils is that they should be fitted for any kind of art.

For ages past the Genius of Literature and the Genius of Art have walked together hand in hand. For the Goddess of letters is blind, and only she of Art can lend her sight.

Don't take my criticisms as iron-clad rules but more as suggestions.

A good deal of large and rather interesting work is drifting my way.

Project your mind into your subject until you actually live in it.

The student learns rules but all the rules in the world never make a picture.

The right to suffer is one of the joys of a free economy.

When the flood cometh it sweepeth away grain as well as chaff.

(H)ope, be it never so faint, bringeth a gleam into darkness, like a little rushlight that costeth but a groat.

An I must drink sour ale, I must, but never have I yielded me to man before, and that without wound or mark upon my body. Nor, when I bethink me, will I yield now.

I criticise these compositions by analysis but an illustration cannot be made that way - it must be made by inspiration.

I managed to potter along tolerably well in the morning, sitting in the sun and sketching the old buildings... but in the afternoon, sitting in the shade... with stiff fingers and chilled bones... the water froze in little cakes all over the picture.

I doubt if there is a single really excellent art school now available in New York.

So passed the seasons then, so they pass now, and so they will pass in time to come, while we come and go like leaves of the tree that fall and are soon forgotten.

If in making a picture you introduce two ideas, you weaken it by half-if three, it weakens by compound ratio-if four, the picture will be really too weak to consider at all and the human interest would be entirely lost.