Portrait Quotes
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Most of our modern portrait painters are doomed to absolute oblivion. They never paint what they see. They paint what the public sees, and the public never sees anything.
Oscar Wilde -
A good portrait is incredibly hard to create, there is too much temptation to pander to the individual rather than portray them as they really were.
Philippe Halsman
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My waking thoughts are all of thee. Your portrait and the remembrance of last night's delirium have robbed my senses of repose. Sweet and incomparable Josephine, what an extraordinary influence you have over my heart. Are you vexed? Do I see you sad? Are you ill at ease? My soul is broken with grief, and there is no rest for your lover.
Napoleon Bonaparte -
I sort of feel that the role of a portrait in society is to represent the sitters, we see paintings of Shakespeare and we believe that it is what he looked like, well maybe a little older, fatter and with a higher hairline. I guess it would be cool if the portraits that were painted really did look like the sitter or expressed some sort of emotion that gave the viewers in the future a sense of the sitter's pathos at the time it was painted.
David Kassan -
We don't have to live up to the expectations of others. Passion is personal. As long as our passion is fueled with the right stuff then keep on plodding forward. I'll never be Mark Twain or Tom Clancy. But that's okay, because neither of them could teach you to mix a boundless number of grays, or where to place the catch light in a portrait.
Jack White The White Stripes -
The future turns out to be something that you make instead of find. It isn't waiting for your arrival, either with an arrest warrant or a band, nor is it any further away than the next sentence, the next best guess, the next sketch for the painting of a life portrait that might become a masterpiece. The future is an empty canvas or a blank sheet of paper, and if you have the courage of your own thought and your own observation, you can make of it what you will.
Lewis H. Lapham -
The people as a body cannot deliberate. Nevertheless, they will feel an irresistible impulse to act, and their resolutions will be dictated to them by their demagogues... and the violent men, who are the most forward to gratify those passions, will be their favorites. What is called the government of the people is in fact too often the arbitrary power of such men. Here, then, we have the faithful portrait of democracy.
Fisher Ames -
Every record is a portrait of the band at that time.
Jimmy Page Led Zeppelin
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Every single person is unlike anyone else. Therefore, in creating a portrait of someone... we must look carefully to catch that particular unique quality. In fact, we can neglect nothing because everything we select or do sends a message to the observer...
Alton Tobey -
Such power!" Adelaida cried all at once, peering greedily at the portrait over her sister's shoulder. "Where? What power?" Lizaveta Prokofyevna asked sharply. "Such beauty has power," Adelaida said hotly. "You can overturn the world with such beauty.
Fyodor Dostoevsky -
Sometimes I spit on my mother's portrait for pleasure.
Salvador Dali -
A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.
Edward Steichen -
Eloquence is a painting of thought; and thus those who, after having painted it, add something more, make a picture instead of a portrait.
Blaise Pascal -
But a Book is only the Heart's Portrait- every Page a Pulse.
Emily Dickinson
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My days are kind of controlled by my projects, so sometimes they're album covers. Sometimes they're commission portrait shoots. Sometimes they are editorial, so it kind of - I don't dictate it.
Carol Friedman -
Portrait The world spreads out on either side no farther than the heart is wide.
Emily Dickinson -
Sometimes, in a portrait, I go straight in with paint onto canvas... Other than riding my bike up and down the hills around here, it is the most dangerous thing I do... like tightrope-walking without a safety net!
David Cobley -
The portrait in his, and he's walking out of the house he was born in with blood on his hands and his head held high and his mother's face on his back, his own inalienable albatross, for all the world to see.
Ann Scott -
We hear a lot in this country about family, and 'American Family' just shows us a portrait we haven't seen as much of yet. 'American Family' lets us know that being American isn't about the color of your hair or eyes or skin: it's really a state of mind.
Esai Morales -
You wouldn't take a portrait of a human being from a hundred feet away and expect to capture their spirit; you'd move in close.
Nick Brandt
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The smiling portrait of you is still hanging on my frowning wall.
Jimi Hendrix The Jimi Hendrix Experience -
I would paint a portrait which would bring the tears, had I canvas for it, and the scene should be -- solitude, and the figures -- solitude -- and the lights and shades, each a solitude.
Emily Dickinson -
So, did I work with Warhol? I worked with him less on that play then I did on other things. He actually did a portrait of my rabbit and some other stuff. Warhol was definitely... Warhol.
Harvey Fierstein -
Sir Joshua would have been glad to take her portrait; and he would have had an easier task than the historian at least in this, that he would not have had to represent the truth of change - only to give stability to one beautiful moment.
George Eliot