Eli Siegel Quotes
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Is there in every work of art something which shows reality as one and also something which shows reality as many and diverse? - must every work of art have a simultaneous presence of oneness and manyness, unity and variety?
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One of the things called forth by the Imagist movement in poetry was neatness; and when we say keenness, we mean neatness. A knife that is keen is also a knife that cuts neatly; it isn't brutal. Sharpness is different from brutality. Brutality is clumsy: it is wide - it has a lot of fist and thumb and no delicate finger.
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The resolution of conflict in self is like the making one of opposites in art.
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Every work of art is about everything.
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Is there in painting an effect which arises from the being together of repose and energy in the artist's mind? - can both repose and energy be seen in a painting's line and color, plane and volume, surface and depth, detail and composition? - and is the true effect of a good painting on the spectator one that makes at once for repose and energy, calmness and intensity, serenity and stir?
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The purpose of photography is to create an emotion about the world through what has been carefully seen and selected.
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To see the outside world as the same stuff as our most secret or unknown thoughts is a fine necessity.
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Art is a way of showing greater fairness to things than is customary.
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Concealment is equated, unknowingly to ourselves, with individuality; the more we conceal the more it seems we are asserting our very personality, resisting a somewhat repellent, unwelcome intrusion of other things into ourselves.
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There is a quality of murky grandeur we give ourselves in having our own feelings, recoiling, separate from other things... To feel that we can care for ourselves without seeing our feelings as objects, and liking them as objects, is to be wrong about our care for ourselves.
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True individuality is the repose arising from the relation of a self to all it has to do with. Bad individuality has in it a separation between outward action and a flat repose inwardly.
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You don't want to see things as they are because your ego would have to admit that things outside yourself are necessary for the self to be. You still have fun, as most people do, from manipulating things.
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Art can make the old surprising, and the new and sudden soothing.
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There is not one thing that music does which does not say something about how a person should organize himself, too.
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The most important thing for you to do is see that in hoping to be affected by other things as fully as possible, you become more yourself.
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All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.
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When truth is divided, errors multiply.
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In reality opposites are one; art shows this.
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The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites.
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The most important thing in industry is the person who does the industry, which is the worker... Labor is the only source of wealth.
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If a mistake is not a stepping stone, it is a mistake.
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We should see the desire for neatness, the desire for sharp impressions, as a desire in art.
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Reality is all that which can affect one.
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In order to be deep, we sometimes have to cut through and cut apart. That is to be seen in the common phrase, 'Cut it out!' The reason is that this thing is seen as superfluous and therefore it should be excised, as a growth, unnecessary, should be excised.