Irving Stone Quotes

Someday my paintings will be hanging in the Louvre. [Vincent Van Gogh]

The best romance is inside marriage; the finest love stories come after the wedding, not before.

There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books.

Story writers say that love is concerned only with young people, and the excitement and glamour of romance end at the altar. How blind they are. The best romance is inside marriage; the finest love stories come after the wedding, not before.

I do not know a better cure for mental illness than a book.

Each of us has his own alphabet with which to create poetry.

Our secret thoughts - do they ever show up? The small flame of our soul can be burning hot, but no one comes to its warmth. Passersby see only a small whiff going through the chimney. Don't we need to take care of that flame, cherish it and patiently wait until someone will come and sit at it, do we?

Who wants to do good in this world must deny oneself. A man does not live on this Earth to be happy or to be honest only - he has to do great things for humanity, achieve the generosity of the spirit and rise above the banality where most of the people are drowning and wasting their days.

Talent is cheap; dedication is expensive. It will cost you your life.

Pleasure is one of the most important things in life, as important as food or drink.

No artist is normal. Who happen to be normal cannot be an artist.

A man who has not suffered has nothing to tell with his paintings.

One should not become an artist because he can, but because he must. It is only for those who would be miserable without it.

Misery is the only thing in the world that has no end or edge.

How difficult it is to be simple.

There are neither good nor evil, only the existence and action.

He had been standing still; for an artist, one of the more painful forms of death.

He had always loved God. In his darkest hours he cried out, "God did not create us to abandon us.

...and rout the magical mystical moonlight with fierce proof of its own greater power to light, to heat, to make everything known.

Man's spirit grows hungry for art in the same way his stomach growls for food.

The real artist while he paints does not think of the sale, only of the need to make a beautiful living thing.

The most perfect guide is nature. Continue without fail to draw something every day.

When I have trouble writing, I step outside my studio into the garden and pull weeds until my mind clears--I find weeding to be the best therapy there is for writer's block.

To try to understand another human being, to grapple for his ultimate depths, that is the most dangerous of human endeavors.

The one who has not seen Paris in the morning does not know how beautiful it is.

Morality is similar to religion - it is a somniferous drug which blinds people from seeing the squalor of their lives.

If it is noticed that much of my outside work concerns itelf with libraries, there is an extremely good reason for this. I think that the better part of my education, almost as important as that secured in the schools and the universities, came from libraries.

No man is born into the world whose work is not born with him.

God did not create us to abandon us.

The paintings that laughed at him merrily from the walls were like nothing he had ever seen or dreamed of. Gone were the flat, thin surfaces. Gone was the sentimental sobriety. Gone was the brown gravy in which Europe had been bathing its pictures for centuries. Here were pictures riotously mad with the sun. With light and air and throbbing vivacity. Paintings of ballet girls backstage, done in primitive reds, greens, and blues thrown next to each other irreverantly. He looked at the signature. Degas.

...that horrible moment of suspense when the artist shows one of his creations to strange eyes for the first time.

How can a young person learn whether he chose the correct way? He thinks he has a special idea, and then he discovers that he is completely inappropriate for it.

Normal people do not create art.

Loneliness is a kind of prison. [Vincent Van Gogh]

Sometimes men are generous and forgiving, sometimes angry and blind.

You cannot be the good all the time — sometimes it is necessary to get angry. [Vincent Van Gogh]

He made his colours, built his stretchers, plastered his canvas, painted his pictures, carpentered his frames, and painted them. 'Too bad I can't buy my own pictures,' he murmured aloud. 'Then I'd be completely self-sufficient.'

Reading has always been the largest and most irreplaceable pleasure for Vincent; reading about other people's successes and failures, joys and sufferings seemed to bury his own failures.

The brooding is better than the joy because even if the heart fills with happiness, it still mourns.

... a canvas that I have covered is worth more than a blank canvas. My pretensions go no further; that is my right to paint, my reason for painting.

The maximum value of art is that it allows the artist to express himself.

I will be an artist. I am sure I will. [Vincent Van Gogh]

You cannot be firmly certain about anything. You can only have enough courage and strength to do what you consider to be right. Maybe it turns out that was wrong, but still you would have done his, and it is most important.

Savoir souffrir sans se plaindre, ça c'est la seule chose pratique, c'est la grande science, la leçon à apprendre, la solution du problème de la vie.[Knowing how to suffer without complaining is the only practical thing, it's the great science, the lesson to learn, the solution to the problem of life.]

There is no thrill of mortal danger to surpass that of a lone man trying to create something that never existed before.

To be an artist is first to be a manual laborer.

It's freezing up here. What did you use to keep warm?" "Indignation," said Michelangelo. "Best fuel I know. Never burns out.

Do not call yourself old. A man is as old as the creative force within him.

From the biography of Freud, by Irving Stone, said by Freud's fiance after he teased her for being sweet, "Beware of truly sweet people. They have will of iron.

An artist would not rise above the mediocrity if he condemns it.