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The Agony and the Ecstasy QUOTES

The Agony and the Ecstasy QUOTES

1 " An artist without ideas is a mendicant; barren, he goes begging among the hours. "

― Irving Stone , The Agony and the Ecstasy

2 " We...believe that art is religious, because it is one of man's highest aspirations. There is no such thing as pagan art, only good and bad art. "

― Irving Stone , The Agony and the Ecstasy

3 " He had never believed that spirituality had to be anemic or aesthetic.
"

― Irving Stone , The Agony and the Ecstasy

4 " A new doctor had been sent for, Lazzaro of Pavia, who had administered to Lorenzo a pulverized mixture of diamonds and pearls. This hitherto infallible medicine had failed to help. "

― Irving Stone , The Agony and the Ecstasy

5 " From this vantage point he came to a realization that everything that had happened to him before this had been a journey upward through time, everything that occurred after it a descent. If he could not control his fate, why be born? "

― Irving Stone , The Agony and the Ecstasy

6 " Bleed me of art, and there won't be enough liquid left in me to spit! [Michelangelo Buonorotti] "

― Irving Stone , The Agony and the Ecstasy

7 " He believed that every individual was responsible for his conduct on earth, that there was a judge within. Could even a blazingly Christ inflict greater retribution? Could Dante's Charon in his rowboat on the river Acheron whip the miscreants into a deeper, more everlasting hell than man's unvarnished verdict of himself? "

― Irving Stone , The Agony and the Ecstasy

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

― Irving Stone , The Agony and the Ecstasy

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

― Irving Stone , The Agony and the Ecstasy

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

― Irving Stone , The Agony and the Ecstasy

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

― Irving Stone , The Agony and the Ecstasy

12 " What meaning has a compliment if one hears it night and day. "

― Irving Stone , The Agony and the Ecstasy

13 " Drawing is the poet's written line, set down to see if there be a story worth telling, a truth worth revealing. "

― Irving Stone , The Agony and the Ecstasy

14 " Listen, my friend, all forms that exist in God's universe can be found in the human figure. A man's body and face can tell everything he represents. So how could I ever exhaust my interest in it? "

― Irving Stone , The Agony and the Ecstasy

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

― Irving Stone , The Agony and the Ecstasy

16 " What we know of others is our personal secret. "

― Irving Stone , The Agony and the Ecstasy

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

― Irving Stone , The Agony and the Ecstasy

18 " We are giving the world back to man, and man back to himself. Man shall no longer be vile, but noble. We shall not destroy his mind in return for an immortal soul. Without a free, vigorous and creative mind, man is but an animal, and he will die like an animal, without any shred of a soul. We return to man his arts, his literature, his sciences, his independence to think and feel as an individual, not to be bound to dogma like a slave, to rot in his chains. "

― Irving Stone , The Agony and the Ecstasy

19 " It's pleasant to get used to the expensive, the soft, the comfortable. Once you're addicted, it's so easy to become a sycophant, to trim the sails of your judgment in order to be kept on. The next step is to change your work to please those in power, and that is death to the sculptor. "

― Irving Stone , The Agony and the Ecstasy

20 " The sculptor is master of time; he can change his subjects forward or back. "

― Irving Stone , The Agony and the Ecstasy