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Composition Quotes

Browse 653 quotes about Composition.

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Composition Quotes

“The Plagiarism of orators is the art, or an ingenious and easy mode, which some adroitly employ to change, or disguise, all sorts of speeches of their own composition, or that of other authors, for their pleasure, or their utility; in such a manner that it becomes impossible even for the author himself to recognise his own work, his own genius, and his own style, so skilfully shall the whole be disguised.”

ArtWholeEasyPleasureImpossibleStyleGeniusSpeechCompositionDisguiseUtilityRecogniseIngeniousPlagiarismOrators
Author:Isaac D'Israeli
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“On the whole, however, the conclusions I have drawn from the proofs quoted may, I believe, safely be relied on. Assuredly they will not be disturbed either by the lays of a poet displaying the exaggeration of his craft, or by the compositions of the chroniclers that are attractive at truth's expense; the subjects they treat of being out of the reach of evidence, and time having robbed most of them of historical value by enthroning them in the region of legend.”

BelieveMayWholeValuesI BelieveSubjectsPoetEvidenceTreatsLaysHistoricalProofConclusionCraftsAttractiveRegionsExpensesLegendsCompositionDisturbedExaggerationHistorical Value
Book:History of Greece
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“The new "ambiguity" means, in a way adjudged favorable to literary, poetic, intellectually and psychologically well-devised and praiseworthily executed linguistic performance, uncertainty of meaning, or difficulty for the interpreter in identifying just what the meaning in question is: it means the old meanings of ambiguity with a difference. It means uncertainty of meaning (of a word or combination of words) purposefully incorporated in a literary composition for the attainment of the utmost possible variety of meaning-play compressible within the verbal limits of the composition.”

WayWellsMeanPlayDifferencesLimitsPerformancesDifficultyVarietyCombinationUncertaintyPoeticCompositionAmbiguityAttainmentIdentifyingInterpreter
Author:Laura Riding
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“Photography is unlike any other art form. In the other arts there is always a continuous interplay between the artist and his art. He has the painting or sculpture before him. What we have tried to do is to provide a medium for "artistic expression" to anyone with only a reasonable amount of time. By giving him a camera system with which he need only control his selection of focus, composition and lighting, we free him to select the moment and to criticize immediately what he has done. We enable him to see what else he wants to do on the basis of what he has just learned.”

WantNeedsGivingArtDoneMomentsFormArtistFocusPaintingExpressionAmountPhotographyBasesCamerasMediumsArtisticReasonableCriticizeCompositionSelectionSculptureSelectLightingArtistic Expression
Author:Edwin Land
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“I put myself in the student's place and remember the frustrations, doubts, determination, and desires I felt when I was going through the initial learning process. The things we now do automatically, such as perspective, pencil control, values and composition were as unfamiliar and intimidating as a foreign language.”

RememberDesireValuesLanguageFeltProcessDoubtStudentsPerspectiveDeterminationFrustrationCompositionPencilsInitialsIntimidatingUnfamiliarLearning ProcessWorkshopsForeign Language
Author:Ted Martinez
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“Every artist knows that there is no such thing as "freedom" in art. The first thing an artist does when he begins a new work is to lay down the barriers and limitations; he decides upon a certain composition, a certain key, a certain relation of creatures or objects to each other. He is never free, and the more splendid his imagination, the more intense his feeling, the farther he goes from general truth and general emotion.”

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Book:Willa Cather on Writing: Critical Studies on Writing as an Art
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“The judge's authority depends upon the assumption that he speaks with the mouth of others. That is to say, the momentum of his utterances must be greater than any which his personal reputation and character can command, if it is to do the work assigned to it - if it is to stand against the passionate resentments arising out of the interests he must frustrate - for while a judge must discover some composition with the dominant trends of his times, he must preserve his authority by cloaking himself in the majesty of an overshadowing past.”

IfsCharacterPastSpeakInterestGreaterJudgingDependsAuthorityMouthsPassionateCommandReputationPreservesAssumptionTrendsResentmentCompositionDominantMajestyMomentumUtteranceOvershadowing
Author:Learned Hand
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“In the composition of the human frame there is a good deal of inflammable matter, however dormant it may lie for a time.”

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Book:Recollections and private memoirs of Washington by his adopted son George Washington with a memoir of the author by his daughter; and illustrative and explanatory notes by Benson J. Loosing: With illustrations
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“Freud believed that our dreams sometimes recapitulate a speech, a comment we've heard or something that we've read. I always had compositions in my dreams. They would be a joke, a piece of a novel, a witticism or a piece of dialogue from a play, and I would dream them. I would actually express them line by line in the dream. Sometimes after waking up I would remember a snatch or two and write them down. There's something in me that just wants to create dialogue.”

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Author:David Mamet
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“Every limited mind demands a certain freedom of expression, and the man who cannot express himself satisfactorily without the stimulation derived from the spirited mode of two centuries ago should certainly be permitted to follow without undue restraint a practice so harmless, so free from essential error, and so sanctioned by precedent, as that of employing in his poetical compositions the smooth and inoffensive allowable rhyme.”

MenShouldMindTwoCertainPracticeCenturyHe ManExpressionDemandEssentialsErrorsCompositionSmoothRestraintRhymeFreedom Of ExpressionPrecedentSpiritedStimulationEmploying
Author:H. P. Lovecraft
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“Gertrude Stein, all courage and will, is a soldier of minimalism. Her work, unlike the resonating silences in the art of Samuel Beckett, embodies in its loquacity and verbosity the curious paradox of the minimalist form. This art of the nuance in repetition and placement she shares with the orchestral compositions of Philip Glass.”

ArtFormSilenceShareSoldierGlassesCuriousParadoxCompositionRepetitionMinimalismNuancePhilipMinimalistBeckettPlacementGertrudeResonating
Book:Sight-readings: American Fictions
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“The 'Women' had to do with the female painted through all ages, all those idols, and maybe I was stuck to a certain extent; I couldn't go on. It did one thing for me: it eliminated composition, arrangement, relationships, light - all this silly talk about line, colour and form - because that was the thing I wanted to get hold of.”

LightAgeWantedFormCertainLinesOne ThingGoes OnFemaleStuckSillyColourIdolsCompositionArrangements
Book:De Kooning: a centennial exhibition
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“Of the eternal corporeal substance (which is not producible ex nihilo, nor reducible ad nihilum, but rarefiable, condensable, formable, arrangeable, and "fashionable") the composition is dissolved, the complexion is changed, the figure is modified, the being is altered, the fortune is varied, only the elements remaining what they are in substance, that same principle persevering which was always the one material principle, which is the true substance of things, eternal, ingenerable and incorruptible.”

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Author:Giordano Bruno
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“It's not always easy for a father to understand the interests and ways of his son. It seems the songs of our children may be in keys we've never tried. The melody of each generation emerges from all that's gone before. Each one of us contributes in some unique way to the composition of life.”

WayMayChildrenSeemsSongFatherEasyInterestGoneGenerationsSonKeysUniqueOur ChildrenMelodyComposition
Book:Wisdom from the World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember
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“God is utterly simple; for every composite being necessarily has a cause of its own composition, and so, since God is the first principle of all things, there can be no real composition whatever in God. Now, in an utterly simple being there can be nothing that is not that simple being itself. In God, therefore, whatever really is, is the same as God, is the same as that which is, is the same as that which subsists, and hence necessarily subsists.”

FirstsRealCausesSimplePrinciplesAll ThingsCompositionBeing ThereComposites
Author:Bernard Lonergan
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“Writers and musicians know well the importance of extensive reading for successful writing or extensive listening for musical composition. Likewise, visual artists... understand that successful artistic creativity depends upon extensive visual exposure.”

KnowsWritingWellsArtistReadingCreativitySuccessfulListeningDependsMusicianImportanceMusicalArtisticVisualsCompositionExposureVisual ArtVisual ArtistArtistic CreativityMusical CompositionSuccessful WritingExtensive Reading
Author:Paul Laseau
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“The point of recapitulation in the first movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony unleashes one of the most horrifyingly violent episodes in the history of music....The point is not to hold up Beethoven as exceptionally monstrous. The Ninth Symphony is probably our most compelling articulation in music of the contradictory impulses that have organized patriarchal culture since the Enlightenment. Moreover, within the parameters of his own musical compositions, he may be heard as enacting a critique of narrative obligations that is...devestating.”

FirstsMayCultureHeardMovementEnlightenmentMusicalViolentObligationNarrativeImpulseOrganizedEpisodesCompellingCompositionContradictorySymphonyCritiqueMonstrousParametersArticulationHistory Of MusicMusical CompositionRecapitulation
Author:Susan McClary
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“For more than twenty years he [Blanchard] toiled on through the most fatiguing paths of literary composition, mostly in periodicals, often anonymously; pleasing and lightly instructing thousands, but gaining none of the prizes, whether of weighty reputation or popular renown, which more fortunate chances, or more pretending modes of investing talent, have given in our day to men of half his merits.”

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Author:Samuel Laman Blanchard
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