Quotessence
Home / Topics / Form Quotes

Form Quotes

Browse 12830 quotes about Form.

Related topics

ArtIfsPeopleThinkingWayMenWorldHumansKnowsMayMindIdeasDifferentGovernmentGivingWritingShouldKindWantBelieveFirstsNeedsMeanDoeSelfWellsHas BeensTryingShapesFeelsPersonsStatesTwoExpressionBodyStillsLongMatterForms Of GovernmentFactsBookWholeRealUseRealityMadeYearsLooksSoulHeartStoriesCertainLanguageImportantArtistIndividualChildrenSpiritLittlesHighestOrderSeemsLawReasonTogetherFeelingsPoliticalMightEndsCharacterColorSocialLightUniverseForceCultureEnergyPlayMomentsNaturalActionI CanWould BeHandsAgeAbleEarthFilmPaintingDemocracyShowsSometimesHelpingProcessLiteratureDoneWarSpiritualUsedObjectsmore

Form Quotes

“Two deep human desires were at war ... the longing for stability, for form, for permanence, which in its essence is the desire for death, and the opposing hunger for movement, change, instability and risk, which are life. Men came from the east and built these American towns because they wished to go no farther, and the towns they built were shaped by the urge to go onward.”

MenHumansTwoWarFormDesireRiskMovementBuiltEssenceTownsLongingHungerEastUrgesStabilityOpposingPermanenceInstability
Book:Old Home Town
Create image

“And last of all we have the secondary forms of crystals bursting in upon us, and sparkling in the rigidity of mathematical necessity and telling us, neither of harmony of design, usefulness or moral significance, nothing but spherical trigonometry and Napier's analogies. It is because we have blindly excluded the lessons of these angular bodies from the domain of human knowledge that we are still in doubt about the great doctrine that the only laws of matter are those which our minds must fabricate, and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter.”

MindHumansStillsMatterBodyLastsFormLawMoralDoubtDesignLessonsHarmonyDoctrineMathematicalSignificanceDomainCrystalsUsefulnessAnalogiesExcludedBurstingSparklingRigidityHuman KnowledgeFabricateTrigonometry
Book:The Scientific Letters and Papers of James Clerk Maxwell: 1846-1862
Create image

“A total work of art is only possible in the context of the whole of society. Everyone will be a necessary co-creator of a social architecture, and, so long as anyone cannot participate, the ideal form of democracy has not been reached. Whether people are artists, assemblers of machines or nurses, it is a matter of participating in the whole.”

LongArtMatterWholeFormArtistSocialDemocracyArt IsIdealsMachinesCreatorArchitectureWorks Of ArtNurseParticipatingDemocracies Have
Author:Joseph Beuys
Create image

“I think art is the only political power, the only revolutionary power, the only evolutionary power, the only power to free humankind form all repression. I say not that art has already realized this, on the contrary, and because it has not, it has to be developed as a weapon, at first there are radical levels, then you can speak about special details.”

ThinkingFirstsArtFormPoliticalSpeakLevelsSpecialWeaponsArt IsDetailsContraryRadicalRevolutionaryHumankindRepressionPolitical Power
Author:Joseph Beuys
Create image

“The individual representation of the object, treated sympathetically or antipathetically, is highly necessary and is an enrichment to the world in form. The elimination of the human relationship causes the vacuum which makes all of us suffer in various degrees - an individual alteration of the details of the object represented is necessary in order to display on the canvas the whole physicals reality.”

WorldHumansWholeRealityFormSufferingOrderIndividualCausesObjectsDegreesDetailsVariousTreatedDisplayCanvasRepresentationVacuumsHuman RelationsHuman RelationshipsEliminationAlterationsEnrichment
Book:Self-Portrait in Words: Collected Writings and Statements, 1903-1950
Create image

“Colour, as the strange and magnificent expression of the inscrutable spectrum of Eternity, is beautiful and important to me as a painter; I use it to enrich the canvas and to probe more deeply into the object. Colour also decided, to a certain extent, my spiritual outlook, but it is subordinated to life, and above all, to the treatment of form. Too much emphasis on colour at the expense of form and space would make a double manifestation of itself on the canvas, and this would verge on craft work.”

ImportantUseBeautifulSpiritualFormCertainSpaceToo MuchObjectsStrangeExpressionDecidedEternityPainterCraftsManifestationColourTreatmentExpensesMagnificentCanvasEmphasisOutlookSpectrumVergeInscrutable
Author:Max Beckmann
Create image

“As a painter, cursed or blessed with a terrible and vital sensuousness, I must look for wisdom with my eyes. I repeat, with my eyes, for nothing could be more ridiculous or irrelevant than a 'philosophical conception painted purely intellectually without the terrible fury of the senses grasping each visible form of beauty and ugliness.”

LooksEyeFormTerriblePhilosophicalBlessedRidiculousSensesPainterRepeatsVisibleConceptionIrrelevantUglinessFuryCursedGrasping
Book:Max Beckmann in exile
Create image

“Politics is a subordinate matter; its form of appearance constantly changes depending on the needs of the masses, the same way cocottes adjust to the needs of men by transforming and masking themselves. Because of that it is not fundamental. That is about what endures, what is unique, what is in the stream of illusions - what is eliminated from the workings of the shadows.”

MenWayNeedsMatterFormMassUniqueIllusionShadowFundamentalsEndureAppearanceStreamsTransformingSubordinates
Book:On My Painting - Max Beckmann
Create image

“I contend that the continued racial classification of Homo sapiens represents an outmoded approach to the general problem of differentiation within a species. In other words, I reject a racial classification of humans for the same reasons that I prefer not to divide into subspecies the prodigiously variable West Indian land snails that form the subject of my own research.”

HumansReasonProblemFormMy OwnLandSubjectsApproachResearchWestSpeciesIndianRejectsDividesHomo SapiensVariablesClassificationSnailDifferentiation
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
Create image

“For the sake of my children and grandchildren, I hope that the human talent for self-destruction can be successfully controlled, or at least channelled into productive forms, but I doubt it. I think we are moving into extremely volatile and dangerous times, as modern electronic technologies give mankind almost unlimited powers to play with its own psychopathology as a game.”

ThinkingGivingHumansChildrenSelfPlayMovingFormGamesTechnologyDoubtModernMankindTalentDangerousDestructionSakeMy ChildrenProductiveControlledUnlimitedGrandchildrenSelf DestructionChildren And GrandchildrenPsychopathologyUnlimited Power
Author:J. G. Ballard
Create image

“War is only a sort of dramatic representation, a sort of dramatic symbol of a thousand forms of duty. I fancy that it is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shooting at you.”

MenWarHardFormDutyThousandSymbolsShootingDramaticFancyRepresentation
Book:Wit and Wisdom of Woodrow Wilson: Extracts from the Public Speeches of the Leader and Interpreter of American Democracy, with Masterpieces of Eloquence
Create image

“And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.”

KnowsTwoEarthLastsFormOrderLove IsStepsPracticeFairsEssenceAbsolutesNotionSakeEssence Of BeautySymposium
Book:The Portable Plato
Create image

“In any form of art designed to appeal to large numbers of people,...[t]he rich man is usually 'bad', and his machinations are invariably frustrated.:; 'Good poor man defeats bad rich man' is an accepted formula.”

PeopleMenArtFormPoorNumbersRichDefeatAcceptedAppealsFormulasFrustratedLarge NumbersRich ManPoor Man
Book:The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: As I please, 1943-1945
Create image

“We must make a great difference between God's Word and the word of man. A man's word is a little sound, that flies into the air, and soon vanishes; but the Word of God is greater than heaven and earth, yea, greater than death and hell, for it forms part of the power of God, and endures everlastingly.”

MenLittlesEarthFormHeavenSoundDifferencesHellGreaterAirEndureWord Of GodHeaven And EarthPower Of God
Book:The table talk or familiar discourse of Martin Luther, tr. by W. Hazlitt
Create image

“The time has come, I think, when we must recognize bisexuality as a normal form of human behavior... we shall not really succeed in discarding the straitjacket of our cultural beliefs about sexual choice if we fail to come to terms with the well-documented, normal human capacity to love members of both sexes.”

IfsThinkingHumansWellsFormChoicesBeliefSexTermFailingSucceedMembersBehaviorNormalCapacityHuman BehaviorCapacity To LoveBisexualityHuman Capacity
Author:Margaret Mead
Create image

“The concept of guilt is found most powerfully developed even in the most primitive communal forms which we know... the man is guilty who violates one of the original laws which dominate the society and which are mostly derived from a divine founder; the boy who is accepted into the tribal community and learns its laws, which bind him thenceforth, learns to promise; this promise is often given under the sign of death, which is symbolically carried out on the boy, with a symbolical rebirth.”

KnowsMenFormLawFoundGivenCommunityBoysDivineHe ManPromiseConceptsOriginalsGuiltAcceptedGuiltyMost PowerfulPrimitiveFoundersRebirth
Author:Martin Buber
Create image

“Religions, creeds and forms are only a characteristic outward sign of the spiritual impulsion and religion itself is the intensive action by which it tries to find its inward force. Its expansive movement comes in the thought which it throws out on life, the ideals which open up new horizons and which the intellect accepts and life labours to assimilate.”

TryingActionSpiritualFormForceAcceptingMovementIdealsIntellectCharacteristicsLabourHorizonCreedsInwardNew Horizons
Book:Bulletin
Create image

“India of the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word; she lives and has still something to do for herself and the human peoples. And that which must seek now to awake is not an anglicised oriental people, docile pupil of the West and doomed to repeat the cycle of the occident's success and failure, but still the ancient immemorable Shakti recovering her deepest self, lifting her head higher towards the supreme source of light and strength and turning to discover the complete meaning and a vaster form of her Dharma.”

PeopleHumansStillsSelfLightAgeLastsFormCreativeSourceHigherIndiaWestAncientSupremeAwakeRepeatsCyclesDoomedLiftingDharmaSuccess And FailurePupilsRecoveringDocileShakti
Author:Sri Aurobindo
Create image

“So far as discipline is concerned, freedom means not its absence but the use of higher and more rational forms as contrasted with those that are lower or less rational. A free discipline controls the individual by appealing to his reason and conscience, and therefore to his self-respect; while an unfree control works upon some lower phase of the mind, and so tends to degrade him. It is freedom to be disciplined in as rational a manner as you are fit for.”

MindMeanSelfReasonUseFormIndividualHigherDisciplineFitConscienceConcernedAbsenceRationalSelf RespectPhasesDegradeUnfree
Book:Human Nature and the Social Order
Create image

“The whole Renaissance tradition is antipethic to me. The hard-and-fast rules of perspective which it succeeded in imposing on art were a ghastly mistake which it has taken four centuries to redress; Cezanne and after him Picasso and myself can take a lot of credit for this. Scientific perspective forces the objects in a picture to disappear away from the beholder instead of bringing them within his reach as painting should.”

ShouldArtHardWholeFormForceMistakeTakenFourCenturyObjectsPaintingPerspectiveTraditionCreditDisappearRenaissanceImposingBeholderGhastlyRedressCezanne
Author:Georges Braque
Create image

“The great Christian art did not die because all possible forms had been used up; it died because faith was being transformed into piety. Now, the same conquest of the outside world that brought in our modern individualism, so different from that of the Renaissance, is by way of relativizing the individual. It is plain to see that man's faculty of transformation, which began by a remaking of the natural world, has ended by calling man himself into question.”

MenWorldWayArtDifferentChristianFormUsedDiesIndividualNaturalModernCallingDiedTransformationFacultyIndividualismTransformedConquestNatural WorldPietyRenaissanceOutside WorldGreat ChristianChristian Art
Author:Andre Malraux
Create image

“The discussion of the game of marbles seems to have led us into rather deep waters. But in the eyes of children the history of the game of marbles has quite as much importance as the history of religion or of forms of government. It Is a history, moreover, that is magnificently spontaneous; and it was therefore perhaps not entirely useless to seek to throw light on the child's judgment of moral value by a preliminary study of the social behaviour of children amongst themselves.”

ChildrenLightSeemsGovernmentEyeFormValuesGamesSocialWaterMoralStudyJudgmentImportanceUselessDiscussionBehaviourSpontaneousMarbleForms Of GovernmentMoral ValuesMoral JudgmentDeep WaterEyes Of A Child
Author:Jean Piaget
Create image

“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
Create image

“Art arises in those strange complexities of action that are called human beings. It is a kind of human behavior. As such it is not magic, except as human beings are magical. Nor is it concerned in absolutes, eternities, "forms," beyond those that may reside in the context of the human being and be subject to his vicissitudes. Art is not an inner state of consciousness, whatever that may mean. Neither is it essentially a supreme form of communication. Art is human behavior, and its values are contained in human behavior.”

HumansKindMayMeanArtStatesActionFormValuesHuman BeingsConsciousnessMagicSubjectsStrangeCommunicationBehaviorArt IsConcernedEternityAbsolutesSupremeAriseComplexityHuman BehaviorStates Of ConsciousnessVicissitudes
Author:Baker Brownell
Create image

“All socialism involves slavery.... That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labors under coercion to satisfy another's desires. The relation admits of many gradations. Oppressive taxation is a form of slavery of the individual to the community as a whole. The essential question is -- How much is he compelled to labor for other benefit than his own, and how much can he labor for his own benefit?”

WholeFormDesireIndividualCommunityResponsibilityEssentialsBenefitsLaborRelationSlaverySlaveSocialismOppressionCompelledTaxationCoercionEssential Questions
Author:Herbert Spencer
Create image