They who derive their worth from their ancestors resemble potatoes, the most valuable part of which is underground.
My praise shall be dedicated to the mind itself. The mind is the man, and the knowledge is the mind. A man is but what he knoweth. The mind is but an accident to knowledge, for knowledge is the double of that which is.
Learning hath his infancy, when it is but beginning and almost childish; then his youth, when it is luxuriant and juvenile; then his strength of years, when it is solid and reduced; and lastly his old age, when it waxeth dry and exhaust.
Men of noble birth are noted to be envious towards new men when they rise. For the distance is altered, and it is like a deceit of the eye, that when others come on they think themselves go back.
Vain-glorious men are the scorn of the wise, the admiration of fools, the idols of paradise, and the slaves of their own vaunts.
The cord breaketh at last by the weakest pull.
Painting is a duality and abstract painting is an entirely aesthetic thing. It always remains on one level. It is only really interesting in the beauty of its patterns or its shapes.
I don’t think people are born artists; I think it comes from a mixture of your surroundings, the people you meet, and luck.
Some paint comes across directly onto the nervous system and other paint tells you the story in a long diatribe through the brain.
It’s always hopeless to talk about painting – one never does anything but talk around it.
If you want to convey fact, this can only ever be done through a form of distortion. You must distort to transform what is called appearance into image.
Very few people have a natural feeling for painting, and so, of course, they naturally think that painting is an expression of the artist’s mood. But it rarely is. Very often he may be in greatest despair and be painting his happiest paintings.
Before I start painting I have a slightly ambiguous feeling: happiness is a special excitement because unhappiness is always possible a moment later.
I would like, in my arbitrary way, to bring one nearer to the actual human being.
You could say that I have no inspiration, that I only need to paint.
I would live to study, not study to live.
For it is most true that a natural and secret hatred and aversation towards society in any man, hath somewhat of the savage beast.
I hold every man a debtor to his profession; from the which as men of course do seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavor themselves, by way of amends, to be a help and ornament thereunto.
Again men have been kept back as by a kind of enchantment from progress in science by reverence for antiquity, by the authority of men counted great in philosophy, and then by general consent.
He that seeketh to be eminent amongst able men hath a great task; but that is ever good for the public. But he that plots to be the only figure amongst ciphers is the decay of a whole age.