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Difficult Quotes

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Difficult Quotes

“Art is a thing so much of the imagination, of the soul, that it is difficult to descend to the fundamentals of technique and yet make it plain to the student that these are but the 'means' and not an end in themselves.”

Mean Art Soul Ends Difficult Imagination Students Art Is Fundamentals Technique

Book:Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting

Source: Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting

“It is difficult to say which is the greatest evil--to have too violent passions, or to be wholly devoid of them. Controlled with firmness, guided by discretion, and hallowed by the imagination, the passions are the vivifiers and quickeners of our being. Without passion there can be no energy of character. Indeed, the passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways, and dangerous only in one--through their excess.”

Way Character Passion Evil Energy Difficult Imagination Fire Dangerous Thousand Violent Controlled Excess Discretion Firmness No Energy

Book:Intuitions and Summaries of Thought

Source: Intuitions and Summaries of Thought

“No disease of the imagination is so difficult to cure, as that which is complicated with the dread of guilt : fancy and conscience then act interchangeably upon us, and so often shift their places, that the illusions of one are not distinguished from the dictates of the other.”

Difficult Imagination Disease Illusion Conscience Guilt Complicated Cures Fancy Dread Distinguished

Book:Commonplace Book

Source: Commonplace Book

“Men may be very learned, and yet very miserable; it is easy to be a deep geometrician, or a sublime astronomer, but very difficult to be a good man. I esteem, therefore, the traveller who instructs the heart, but despise him who only indulges the imagination. A man who leaves home to mend himself and others, is a philosopher; but he who goes from country to country, guided by the blind impulse of curiosity, is only a vagabond.”

Source: The works of Oliver Goldsmith. 2: Enquiry into the present state of polite learning; The citizen of the world

“I’ve never intended to make religious records or records that preach some kind of point of view... If you’re involved with imagination and the creative process, it’s not such a difficult thing to believe in a god. But I’m not involved in any religions.”

Ifs Believe Kind Process Difficult Imagination Religious Views Creative Records Involved Point Of View Creative Process Difficult Things

Author:Nick Cave

“The Southern newspapers, with their advertisements of negro sales and personal descriptions of fugitive slaves, supply details of misery that it would be difficult for imagination to exceed. Scorn, derision, insult, menace - the handcuff, the last - the tearing away of children from parents, of husbands from wives - the weary trudging in droves along the common highways, the labor of body, the despair of mind, the sickness of heart - these are the realities which belong to the system, and form the rule, rather that the exception, in the slave's experience.”

Source: Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839

“Virtue and decency are so nearly related that it is difficult to separate them from each other but in our imagination.”

Difficult Imagination Virtue Related Decency

Author:Marcus Tullius Cicero

“vivisection is not the same thing as scientific progress. There is such a thing as scientific progress. But this wholesale dedication of scientists to vivisection, which is the easy and cheap way, actually prevents them from scientific progress, for true progress is difficult and requires genius and imagination in its devoted workers.”

Way Easy Difficult Imagination Animal Progress Genius Scientist Workers Animal Rights Dedication Devoted Wholesale Vivisection Scientific Progress

Book:Strength to Your Sword Arm: Selected Writings

Source: Strength to Your Sword Arm: Selected Writings

“The profession of magician, is one of the most perilous and arduous specializations of the imagination. On the one hand there is the hostility of God and the police to be guarded against; on the other it is as difficult as music, as deep as poetry, as ingenious as stage-craft, as nervous as the manufacture of high explosives, and as delicate as the trade in narcotics.”

Hands Difficult Imagination Magic Stage Police Trade Profession Nervous Crafts Delicate Magician Hostility Ingenious Guarded Explosives Specialization Narcotics

Author:William Bolitho

“Catholicism is the big house of Christianity. It's got many, many rooms in it. And I've always been attracted to the rooms which are to do with prayer. The mystical strain is the strain whereby the whole day can be given over to prayer through what we call lectio divina, prayerful reading of Scripture, through practice of meditation of when one uses the imagination and the intellect with respect to images, and then finally, and most difficult of all, contemplation, where one empties the mind of all images and all ideas, all concepts, in order to be completely attentive to God.”