Quotes from Irving Stone

That was how his pen finally designed his sculpture; in the center the weak, confused, arrogant, soon to be destroyed young man holding cup a loft, behind him the idyllic child, clear-eyed, munching his grapes, symbol of joy ; between them the tiger skin. The Bacchus, hollow within himself, flabby, reeling, already old; the Satyr, eternally young and gay, symbol of man's childhood and naughty innocence

As he reached the door of the chapel and turned back for a last look, he saw that the Virgin too was sad and lonely; the most alone human being God ever put on earth.

Vincent took them in the full spirit of friendship which knows that the difference between giving and taking is purely temporal.

Morality is similar to religion - it is a somniferous drug which blinds people from seeing the squalor of their lives.

Na?i ?e se drugi papa, ali nikad više ne?e biti Boti?elija.

Sometimes I think that just as trains and carriages are means of locomotion to get us from one place to another on this earth, so typhoid and consumption are means of locomotion to get us from one world to another.

there is more beauty in a harsh truth than in a pretty lie, more poetry in earthiness than in all the salons of Paris.

Very well, Vincent, said Zola with a smile, you have been nominated for the cult of ugliness. Do you accept the nomination? Alas, said Vincent, I'm afraid I was born into it.

Lorenzo il Magnifico, the Plato Four, the humanists had taught him that man was the center of the universe; and this was never more demonstrable that when he stood looking upward and found himself, a lone individual, serving as the central pole holding up the tarpaulin of sun and clouds, moon and stars, knowing that, lone or abandoned as he might feel, without his support the heavens would fall.

Perhaps you could not find such godless, such ruthless and such materialist people as clergy.

Every man must settle down once in a lifetime.

Mother, where did you find the courage?' …' Courage, Johnny? I don't know. We just do blindly the thing we think is right...What was it that moved me: love? Duty? Ambition? All three. Now I have my reward in full measure.' -p. Abigail to Johnny, Those Who Love, p. 564

Cardinal Giovanni still did not like delicate matters; they were usually painful.

He felt extremely friendly to them all; they too knew what splendid thing it was to be in love.

Misery is the only thing in the world that has no end or edge.

Do you call yourself an artist?" "Yes." "How absurd. You never sold a picture in your life." "Is that what being an artist means—selling? I thought it meant one who was always seeking without absolutely finding. I thought it means the contrary from 'I know it, I have found it.' When I say I am an artist, I only mean

Her gown was cut Sufficiently low to suggest how abundantly the coming generations might be nourished.

Immortality means being loved by many anonymous people.

Never let it happen to you as it did to me. That you wake in the morning, stare at the ceiling, ask yourself, 'What have I got to get up for today?' and answer... 'Nothing.

I was thinking that Rembrandt would have like to paint you.

But we artists have to be selfish you know, after all, with each painting, we die a little.

Crime was not a cause, but a result; the prisons were the open sores of a diseased social body.

?tiin?a este arta de a crea iluzii acceptabile.

Nimeni nu poate sc?pa de suferin??, cel mai bun lucru pe care îl putem face e s? nu suferim orbeÈ™te.