Quotes by Art Historians

There is no bombast, no similes, flowers, digressions, or unnecessary descriptions. Everything tends directly to the catastrophe.
Horace Walpole
This world is a comedy to those who think a tragedy to those who feel.
Horace Walpole
Work in some form or other is the appointed lot of all.
Anna Jameson
Governments last as long as the under-taxed can defend themselves against the over-taxed.
Bernard Berenson
The true snob never rests there is always a higher goal to attain and there are by the same token always more and more people to look down upon.
Russell Lynes
The way in which we think of ourselves has everything to do with how our world sees us.
Arlene Raven
A complete life may be one ending in so full an identification with the not-self that there is no self left to die.
Bernard Berenson
Never try to walk across a river just because it has an average depth of four feet.
Martin Friedman
We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion just as affectively as by bombs.
Kenneth Clark
The world is a comedy to those who think a tragedy to those who feel.
Horace Walpole
Sweets are good for the nerves.
Margarete Bieber
I wish I could stand on a busy corner hat in hand and beg people to throw me all their wasted hours.
Bernard Berenson
Mystery is the wisdom of blockheads.
Horace Walpole
We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion just as affectively as by bombs.
Kenneth Clark
The way in which we think of ourselves has everything to do with how our world sees us.
Arlene Raven
The world is a comedy to those who think a tragedy to those who feel.
Horace Walpole
Sweets are good for the nerves.
Margarete Bieber
I wish I could stand on a busy corner hat in hand and beg people to throw me all their wasted hours.
Bernard Berenson
Mystery is the wisdom of blockheads.
Horace Walpole
I am in a moment of pretty wellness.
Horace Walpole
The best philosophy is to do one's duties to take the world as it comes submit respectfully to one's lot and bless the goodness that has given us so much happiness with it whatever it is.
Horace Walpole
We can sometimes love what we do not understand but it is impossible completely to understand what we do not love.
Anna Jameson
Governments last as long as the undertaxed can defend themselves against the overtaxed.
Bernard Berenson
The streams which would otherwise diverge to fertilize a thousand meadows must be directed into one deep narrow channel before they can turn a mill.
Anna Jameson
We define genius as the capacity for productive reaction against one's training.
Bernard Berenson
Old friends are the great blessing of one's later years. ... They have a memory of the same events and have the same mode of thinking.
Horace Walpole
Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy.
Anita Brookner
We are largely the playthings of our fears. To one fear of the dark to another of physical pain to a third of public ridicule to a fourth of poverty to a fifth of loneliness ... for all of us our particular creature waits in ambush.
Horace Walpole
A series of failures may culminate in the best possible result.
Gisela Richter
Enemies could become the best companions. Companionship is based on a common interest and the greater the interest the closer the companionship. What makes enemies of people if not the eagerness the passion for the same thing?
Bernard Berenson
Cynicism - the intellectual cripple's substitute for intelligence.
Russell Lynes
We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion just as effectively as by bombs.
Kenneth Clark
Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
Bernard Berenson
No blame should attach to telling the truth.
Anita Brookner
As I got warmed up and felt perfectly at home in talk I heard myself boasting lying exaggerating. Oh not deliberately far from it. It would be unconvivial and dull to stop and arrest the flow of talk and speak only after carefully considering whether I was telling the truth.
Bernard Berenson
Always let them think of you as singing and dancing.
Anita Brookner
All good fortune is a gift of the gods and ... you don't win the favor of the ancient gods by being good but by being bold.
Anita Brookner
Rembrandt painted about 700 pictures - of these 3 000 are in existence.
Wilhelm Bode
I wonder whether Art has a higher function than to make me feel appreciate and enjoy natural objects for their art value?
Bernard Berenson
To act with common sense according to the moment is the best wisdom and the best philosophy is to do one's duties to take the world as it comes submit respectfully to one's lot and bless the goodness that has given us so much happiness with it whatever it is.
Horace Walpole
You get a lot of borderline cases in libraries.
Anita Brookner
He tries to get close to her because he wants to know what her glow feels like. She’s alone on the dance floor and even though she’s dancing, there’s a kind of sadness lurking about her, like her heart is somewhere else. Roman doesn’t think he has ever seen a woman look this beautiful. It’s not just her halo either. Even in that one brief moment Roman feels it. He feels her become a part of his life. Her halo is glowing a little less bright now, and Roman doesn’t know why. But he wants to find out.
Sam Hunter
Here, Mortimer Wheeler thought, is power. And a reminder of our mortality.
Robert M. Edsel
I was never educated to be an actor. I went to a regular college. It was a great thing for me because I feel that the main thing to get out of college is a thirst for knowledge. College should teach you how to be curious. Most people think that college is the end of education, but it isn't. The ceremony of giving you the diploma is called commencement. And that means you are fit to commence learning because you have learned hot to learn.
Vincent Price
The reason for which Picasso was compelled to resort to signs and allegories should now be clear enough: his utter political helplessness in the face of a historical situation which he set out to record; his titanic effort to confront a particular historical event with an allegedly eternal truth; his desire to give hope and comfort and to provide a happy ending, to compensate for the terror, the destruction, and inhumanity of the event. Picasso did not see what Goya had already seen, namely, that the course of history can be changed only by historical means and only if men shape their own history instead of acting as the automaton of an earthly power or an allegedly eternal idea.
Max Raphael
Although of course I am aware that it changes colour in a jar. But we know why, surely? The heavier melancholic elements in the blood sink, making the top lighter and the bottom darker.""Not so," I said firmly. "Cover the jar, and the colour does not change. And I can find no explanation of how such separation could occur in the lungs. But when it emerges from the lungs - at least, this is the case in cats - it is very much lighter in colour than when it goes in, indicating that some darkness is withdrawn from it.""I must cut up a cat and see for myself. A live cat, was it?""It was for a while.
Iain Pears
There, too, she would sit for hours gazing seawards. No tiniest speck of sail that crossed the waters could escape her watchful eyes, and as she watched she dreamed that some day one of these distant sails should bear down towards her, and one should come, in whose hand she would lay her own, and they two would flee to the far East. But as the changeless years went by and brought him not, the girl grew sullen, and a sense of wrong possessed her, for the older she grew, the clearer became her consciousness of a world beyond her, and the greater her longing to seek it.("The Serpent's Head")
Emilia Francis Strong Dilke
I think that those few words were my greatest mistake.
Anita Brookner
There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists.
E.H. Gombrich
It has been said that art is a tryst; for in the joy of it, maker and beholder meet.
Kojiro Tomita
Not everyone is born to fulfill an heroic role. The only realistic ambition is to live in the present. And sometimes, quite often in fact, this is more than enough to keep one busy. Time, which was once squandered, must now be given over to the actual, the possible, and perhaps that evanescent hope of a good outcome which never deserts one, and which should never be abandoned.
Anita Brookner
Civilization depends on continually making the effort, of never giving in. It needs to be cared for by men of goodwill, protected from the dark.
Iain Pears
Light and air — what means wherewith to conjure up illusions and deceive the senses!
John C. Van Dyke
In the early twelfth century century the Virgin had been the supreme protectress of civilisation. She had taught a race of tough and ruthless barbarians the virtues of tenderness and compassion. The great cathedrals of the Middle Ages were her dwelling places upon earth. In the Renaissance, while remaining the Queen of Heaven, she became also the human mother in whom everyone could recognise qualities of warmth and love and approachability...The stabilising, comprehensive religions of the world, the religions which penetrate to every part of a man's being--in Egypt, India or China--gave the female principle of creation at least as much importance as the male, and wouldn't have taken seriously a philosophy that failed to include them both...It's a curious fact that theall-male religions have produced no religious imagery--in most cases have positively forbidden it. The great religious art of the world is deeply involved with the female principle.
Kenneth Clark
Our clothes are too much a part of us for most of us ever to be entirely indifferent to their condition: it is as though the fabric were indeed a natural extension of the body, or even of the soul.
Quentin Bell
Nature is gendered, but not sexist.
Janine Burke
What is this thing? Did you make it?”“I am a chemist, aren’t I?” Laurence says.“You own a meth-lab,” Benjamin says. “That does not qualify you as a chemist.
Sam Hunter
The tragic hero usurps the function of the gods and attempts to remake the world.
Helen Gardner
In Venice, things not always as they first appear. I contemplate this observation from my post on the aft deck of one of Master Fumagalli’s gondolas, taking in the panorama of bridges, domes, bell towers, and quaysides of my native city. I row into the neck of the Grand Canal, and, one by one, the reflection of each colorful façade appears, only to dissipate into wavering, shimmering shards under my oar.
Laura Morelli
They had waited for too long, and the result was this hiatus, and the reflection that time and patience may bring poor rewards, that time itself, if not confronted at the appropriate juncture, can play sly tricks, and more significantly, that those who do not act are not infrequently acted upon.
Anita Brookner