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Portrait Quotes

Browse 33 quotes about Portrait.

Portrait Quotes

“(The Mona Lisa), that really is the ugliest portrait I’ve seen, the only thing that supposedly makes it famous is the mystery behind it,” Katherine admitted as she remembered her trips to the Louvre and how she shook her head at the poor tourists crowding around to see a jaundiced, eyebrow-less lady that reminded her of tight-lipped Washington on the dollar bill. Surely, they could have chosen a better portrait of the First President for their currency?”

ArtHumorFunnyMoneyMysteryMasterpieceArtworkSad But TrueMona LisaPresidentsPortraitGadflyGeorge WashingtonSarcastic QuotesDa VinciUgly Art
Book:Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
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“...of his family that he should be painted; he consented at length for his children's sake, but was disturbed when the portrait arrived: "I was but too much taken with my own shadow when it came home; but then I thought, a man should study both to be blameless and eminently active, that presumes to leave a picture behind him. If it put in mind of evil or of no good done by him, it is to little or bad purpose." The extreme Puritan would have rejected the idea of a portrait out of hand as a mortal vanity. p126”

SelfPaintingVanityPortrait
Book:The English Face
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“We weren’t happy together but we lived in a state of easy, mild contentment. We shared everything except the stupid fucking secret hanging round your neck. I imagined tiny photographs: portraits in sepia of your parents, their faces partially obscured by goitres. Meanwhile, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next year, maybe not even in a decade from now but one day: the planet would fall apart.”

LoveInspirationalPastHappinessHopeSecretNovelFuturePhotographProseShort StoriesPlanetPortraitIreadbooksactuallyBooksactuallyMath Paper PressSepiaJon Gresham
Book:We Rose Up Slowly
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“The missing remained missing and the portraits couldn't change that. But when Akhmed slid the finished portrait across the desk and the family saw the shape of that beloved nose, the air would flee the room, replaced by the miracle of recognition as mother, father, sister, brother, aunt, and cousin found in that nose the son, brother, nephew, and cousin that had been, would have been, could have been, and they might race after the possibility like cartoon characters dashing off a cliff, held by the certainty of the road until they looked down -- and plummeted is the word used by the youngest brother who, at the age of sixteen, is tired of being the youngest and hopes his older brother will return for many reasons, not least so he will marry and have a child and the youngest brother will no longer be youngest; that youngest brother, the one who has nothing to say about the nose because he remembers his older brother's nose and doesn't need the nose to mean what his parents need it to mean, is the one who six months later would be disappeared in the back of a truck, as his older brother was, who would know the Landfill through his blindfold and gag by the rich scent of clay, as his older brother had known, whose fingers would be wound with the electrical wires that had welded to his older brother's bones, who would stand above a mass grave his brother had dug and would fall in it as his older brother had, though taking six more minutes and four more bullets to die, would be buried an arm's length of dirt above his brother and whose bones would find over time those of his older brother, and so, at that indeterminate point in the future, answer his mother's prayer that her boys find each other, wherever they go; that younger brother would have a smile on his face and the silliest thought in his skull a minute before the first bullet would break it, thinking of how that day six months earlier, when they all went to have his older brother's portrait made, he should have had his made, too, because now his parents would have to make another trip, and he hoped they would, hoped they would because even if he knew his older brother's nose, he hadn't been prepared to see it, and seeing that nose, there, on the page, the density of loss it engendered, the unbelievable ache of loving and not having surrounded him, strong enough to toss him, as his brother had, into the summer lake, but there was nothing but air, and he'd believed that plummet was as close as they would ever come again, and with the first gunshot one brother fell within arms' reach of the other, and with the fifth shot the blindfold dissolved and the light it blocked became forever, and on the kitchen wall of his parents' house his portrait hangs within arm's reach of his older brother's, and his mother spends whole afternoons staring at them, praying that they find each other, wherever they go.”

LifeWarBeautifulDeathLossFamilyBrotherHeartbreakingChechnyaPortrait
Book:A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
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“A Churchyard In Summertime by Stewart Stafford O, to stand in a quiet country churchyard, The graveyard bending in summer zephyrs, Chlorophyll light beneath swaying poplars, Rook song in twilight's nocturne. Oblivious hues spread upon canvas, Beside the somnambulant swanning river, Miasmas of midges at the water's edge, In the crosshairs of a painter's thumb. Then the sun rolls away over the horizon, A veil draws across the long day's play, A churn supper collection of basket and easel, Recollections in the slumbering night. © Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.”

PoetryPoemSummerPainterSummertimeDaydreamPortraitChurchyardsChurchyardSummer Poetry
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“As he lifted his head, he saw a painting on the wall, in a carved and gilded frame. It was a luminous portrait of the Duchess with her children when they were still young. The group was arranged on the settee, with Ivo, still an infant, on his mother's lap. Gabriel, Raphael, and Seraphina were seated on either side of her, while Phoebe leaned over the back of the settee. Her face was close to her mother's, her expression tender and slightly mischievous, as if she were about to tell her a secret or make her laugh.”

FamilyPhoebe ClarePortraitGabriel St VincentChallonsIvo ChallonSeraphina ChallonEvangeline KingstonRaphael Challon
Book:Devil's Daughter
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“Looking at Loh’s photographs, it is obvious that there is nothing simpler and richer than a face when stripped of all effects and affects, poses and postures, stances and pretences. The Singaporeans featured here are almost expressionless, as if the photographer wanted to leave us clueless about them. What do their faces tell us? Why are they so familiar? Why do we feel we know this auntie that we don’t know? And this guy with the nondescript look? And this girl with no distinguishing mark? Have we met before?”

PhotographySingaporePortraitSingaporean100 SingaporeansRaphael MilletWesley Loh
Author:Raphael Millet
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“How about I take you to my studio? Much less dangerous. Plus, I need a model and you could sit for me." "You want me to sit for a portrait?" I asked stunned. "Actually, at the moment I'm concentrating on full-length nudes, in the spirit of Modigliani," Jules said. He was making an effort to keep a straight face. "Just kidding, Kates. You're a lady." Jules was trying the guilt-trip method of attack. And it was working. "Ok I'll pose for you," I conceded. "But under no circumstances will any article of clothing leave my body whilst I am in your studio." "And if you're elsewhere?" he asked, breaking into a sly smile. I rolled my eyes.”

LolKatiePortraitJules
Book:Until I Die
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“J'ai une passion pour les tulipes, plus que pour aucune autre fleur de printemps; gaies, robustes, gracieuses, elles semblent de jeunes filles sortant du bain à côté des jacinthes, ces femmes aux formes opulentes dont chaque mouvement sature l'air de patchouli. Leur parfum, délicat et léger, est un comble de raffinement. Existe-t-il au monde rien de plus charmant que l'ardeur avec laquelle elles tendent leurs petits visages vers le soleil ? On les a taxées de prétention, et de vanité, alors que pour moi elles sont toute grâce et modestie, et ne sont coupables que de vouloir jouir de la vie sans craindre de regarder le soleil en face.”

PortraitFleurJardinJacintheTulipe
Book:Elizabeth and Her German Garden
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“All of my imaginings about Melody were like sketch drawings in comparison to the vividness of her. And I imagined a lot, but not her warmth, her sweetness, her love for her family, her plans to go into space engineering. She laughed from her belly and it would shake her whole body. She hummed when impatient, she cursed loudly when she was happy. I collected all these moments of her, filled in my thought sketches with color and texture, painted her portrait in my mind. I don't ever want to forget, I thought, the fullness of this woman.”

LoveWomanFullnessPortraitVivid ImageryDrawingsSketches
Book:You've Got a Place Here, Too: An Anthology of Black Love Stories Set at HBCUs
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“The paint is drying, and time is dying. The pain is crying, lying on my back, trying to get back the time, to brushstrokes too fast, wet went dry and love went dull; now I live in a portrait I never painted.”

HardDonePainTimeWishSleepDyingPaintingRegretWake UpFinishedDryDullToo LateNightmareWetRemorseStaleBroken LovePortraitSaddnessQuickSpeedyRecaptureAnother StoryBrushstrokesToo FastDisappointment Over SomethingRewind The Hands Of Time
Author:Anthony Liccione
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