Quotes About Influence

There is no such thing as good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral- immoral from a scientific point of view.

The ages live in history through their anachronisms.

In America the president reigns for 4 years, and journalism governs for ever and ever.

It is personalities, not principles, that move the age

The arts that have escaped [uniformity] best are the arts in which the public take no interest. Poetry is an instance of what I mean. We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read it, and consequently do not influence it.

Don't spoil him. Don't try to influence him. Your influence would be bad. The world is wide and has many marvellous people in it. Don't take away from me the one person who gives to my art whatever charm that possesses: my life as an artist depends on him.

Some subtle influence passed from him to me, and for the first time in my life I saw in the plain woodland the wonder I had always looked for, and always missed.

You might see nothing in him. I see everything in him. He is never more present in my work than when no image of him is there. He is a suggestion, as I have said, of a new manner. I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours.

He has a simple and a beautiful nature...Don't spoil him. Don't try to influence him. Your influence would be bad. The world is wide, and has many marvellous people in it. Don't take away from me the one person who gives to my art whatever charm it possesses: my life as an artist depends on him.

The public is largely influenced by the look of a book. So are we all. It is the only artistic thing about the public.

Yes Harry I believe that is true. I cannot help telling you things. You have a curious influence over me. If I ever did a crime I would come and confess it to you. You would understand me.

You have never been poor, and never known what ambition is. Wealth has given me enormous power. It gave me at the very outset of my life freedom, and freedom is everything.

He seems to read nothing but my books, and says his one desire is to 'follow in my footsteps'! But I have told him that they lead to terrible places.

People who shout so loud, my lords, do nothing; the only men I fear are silent men

Yes, Dorian, you will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit.

Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out. Whatever influence I ever had over mamma, I lost at the age of three.

Yet one had ancestors in literature as well as in one's own race, nearer perhaps in type and temperament, many of them, and certainly with an influence of which one was more absolutely conscious.

I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself.

The trouble with women is, that when they grow up, they turn into their mothers. The trouble with men is, that they don't.

What you read when you don't have to will determine what you will be when you can't help it.

Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob

Nature is no great mother who has home us. She is our own creation. It is in our brain that she quickens to life. Things are because we see them, and what we see and how we see it depends on the arts that have influenced us. To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty.

Palabras! ¡Simples palabras! ¡Qué terribles eran! ¡Cuán claras, vívidas y crueles! Parece que uno no puede escaparse de ellas. ¡Y, sin embargo, qué magia sutil contienen! Parecen conferir una forma plástica a las cosas informes y tienen una música propia, tan dulce como la del violín o la del laúd. ¡Simples palabras! ¿Hay algo más real que las palabras?

As for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that. Art has no influence upon action.