"Always lines, never forms. Where do they find these lines in Nature? Personally I see only forms that are lit up and forms that are not, planes that advance and planes that recede, relief and depth. My eye never sees outlines or particular features or details... ...My brush should not see better than I do. [Goya, in a recall of an overheard conversation]"
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and engravings reflected contemporary historical upheavals and influenced important 19th- and 20th-century painters. Goya is often referred to as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the mode
"My dear soul, I can stand on my own feet, but so poorly that I dont know if my head is on my shoulders. I have no appetite or desire to do anything at all. Only your letters cheer me up – only yours. I dont know what will become of me now that I have lost sight of you; I who idolize you have given up hope that youll ever glance at these blurred lines and get consolation from them."
"Imagination without reason produces impossible monsters; with reason, it becomes the mother of the arts, and the source of its marvels."
"My position is entirely different from what the majority of the public imagine.. .I want a great deal, firstly because my position entails expenditure, and secondly because I like it. Being a very well-known man I cannot reduce my expenses as other people do. I was about to ask for an increase of salary, but the conditions are so unfavorable that I must set the idea aside."
"To occupy my imagination, which has been depressed by dwelling on my misfortunes, and to compensate at least in part for some of the considerable expenses I have incurred, I set myself to painting a series of cabinet pictures.. ..they depict themes that cannot usually be dealt with in commissioned works, where capricho [whim] and invention do not have much of a role to play. I thought of sending them to the academy.."
"Your Excellency, I am in receipt of His Majestys royal order, which your excellency communicated to me on the 6th inst., accepting the offer of my work, the Caprichos on eighty copper plate engraved with aqua-fortis by my hand, which I will hand to the Royal Calografia with the lot of prints which I had printed by way of precaution, amounting to two hundred and forty copies of eighty prints, in order not to defraud His Majesty in the least, and for my own satisfaction as to my mode of procedure. I am very grateful for the pension of twelve thousand reals which His Majesty has been pleased to grant to my son [Xavier Goya], for which I offer my best thanks to His Majesty, and to your excellency.. ..I only desire your excellencys orders, and that you may keep well. May God preserve your excellencys valuable life for many years.. .Your excellencys obedient and grateful servant, Franco de Goya."
"M. Manet has never seen any Goyas, M. Manet has never seen any El Grecos.. ..that may seem unbelievable to you, but its the truth. I myself have been filled with wonder and stupefaction at these mysterious coincidences.. .Hes heard so much about his pastiches of Goya, that he is now trying to see some of Goyas paintings.. .Every time you try to pay Manet a service, Ill be grateful.. ..quote my letter or at least several lines of it. What Im telling you is the naked truth."
"Now Art, used collectively for painting, sculpture, architecture and music, is the mediatress between, and reconciler of, nature and man. It is, therefore, the power of humanizing nature, of infusing the thoughts and passions of man into everything which is the object of his contemplation."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge"The Good consists in the congruity of a thing with the laws of the reason and the nature of the will, and in its fitness to determine the latter to actualize the former: and it is always discursive. The Beautiful arises from the perceived harmony of an object, whether sight or sound, with the inborn and constitutive rules of the judgment and imagination: and it is always intuitive."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge"I believe that the unity of man as opposed to other living things derives from the fact that man is the conscious life of himself. Man is conscious of himself, of his future, which is death, of his smallness, of his impotence; he is aware of others as others; man is in nature, subject to its laws even if he transcends it with his thought."
Erich Fromm"Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flower Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet? God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God! God! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice! Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds! And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!"
Samuel Taylor Coleridge"All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair — The bees are stirring — birds are on the wing — And Winter slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring! And I the while, the sole unbusy thing, Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge"Taste is the intermediate faculty which connects the active with the passive powers of our nature, the intellect with the senses; and its appointed function is to elevate the images of the latter, while it realizes the ideas of the former."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge