E.h Quotes

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The tattoo is just setting below his hp bone. H e l l i s e m p t y a n d a l l t h e d e v i l s a r e h e r e I kiss my way across the words. Kissing away the devils. Kissing away the pain.
Tahereh Mafi (Ignite Me (Shatter Me, #3))
One never finishes learning about art. There are always new things to discover.
E.H. Gombrich (The Story of Art)
h e l l  i s  e m p t y a n d  a l l  t h e  d e v i l s  a r e  h e r e
Tahereh Mafi (Ignite Me (Shatter Me, #3))
If one of the things you believe in, Is that this world's an ugly place, You must have never gone outside at, And stared up into space, You haven't felt the way the air changes, In the minutes before it rains, Or watched the world pass by below, Out the window of a plane, You've never been awake so early, That you see the moment the sun starts to rise, And you've never lain with your back on the grass, And made shapes with the clouds in the sky, But maybe if you've done all this, But still don't believe it's not true, It's because you can't see all the beauty, That I see when I look at you" ~e.h.
Erin Hanson (Reverie (The Poetic Underground #1))
Anyone who can handle a needle convincingly can make us see a thread which is not there.
E.H. Gombrich (Art and Illusion)
The historian without his facts is rootless and futile; the facts without their historian are dead and meaningless.
Edward Hallett Carr
No, really, Herr Nietzche, I have great admiration for you. Sympathy. You want to make us able to live with the void. Not lie ourselves into good-naturedness, trust, ordinary middling human considerations, but to question as has never been questioned before, relentlessly, with iron determination, into evil, through evil, past evil, accepting no abject comfort. The most absolute, the most piercing questions. Rejecting mankind as it is, that ordinary, practical, thieving, stinking, unilluminated, sodden rabble, not only the laboring rabble, but even worse the "educated" rabble with its books and concerts and lectures, its liberalism and its romantic theatrical "loves" and "passions"--it all deserves to die, it will die. Okay. Still, your extremists must survive. No survival, no Amor Fati. Your immoralists also eat meat. They ride the bus. They are only the most bus-sick travelers. Humankind lives mainly upon perverted ideas. Perverted, your ideas are no better than those the Christianity you condemn. Any philosopher who wants to keep his contact with mankind should pervert his own system in advance to see how it will really look a few decades after adoption. I send you greetings from this mere border of grassy temporal light, and wish you happiness, wherever you are. Yours, under the veil of Maya, M.E.H.
Saul Bellow (Herzog)
If you have the courage to love, then you should have the courage to suffer, too.
E.H. Majaw
She has a bookshelf for a heart, and ink runs through her veins, she’ll write you into her story with the typewriter in her brain. Her bookshelf’s getting crowded. With all the stories that’s she’s penned, of all the people who flicked through her pages but closed the book before it ended. And there’s one pushed to the very back, that sits collecting dust, with its title in her finest writing, ‘The One’s Who Lost My Trust’. There’s books shes scared to open, and books she doesn't close. Stories of every person she’s met stretched out in endless rows. Some people have only one sentence while others once held a main part, thousands of inky footprints that they've left across her heart. You might wonder why she does this, why write of people she once knew? But she hopes one day she’ll mean enough for someone to write about her too.
E.H.
There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists.
E.H. Gombrich
Because of Stephen King, horror movies don’t scare me. There is nothing a horror movie director can do to me that Stephen King hasn’t done already.
E.H. Kern
Thieves and liars kill indirectly, unintentionally, and with no other weapon than their tongues and malice.
A.E.H. Veenman
...the whole story of art is not a story of progress in technical proficiency, but a story of changing ideas and requirements.
E.H. Gombrich (The Story of Art)
We tend to be taken aback by the thought that God could be angry. how can a deity who is perfect and loving ever be angry?...We take pride in our tolerance of the excesses of others. So what is God's problem?... But love detests what destroys the beloved. Real love stands against the deception, the lie, the sin that destroys. Nearly a century ago the theologian E.H. Glifford wrote: 'Human love here offers a true analogy: the more a father loves his son, the more he hates in him the drunkard, the liar, the traitor.'... Anger isn't the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference... How can a good God forgive bad people without compromising himself? Does he just play fast and loose with the facts? 'Oh, never mind...boys will be boys'. Try telling that to a survivor of the Cambodian 'killing fields' or to someone who lost an entire family in the Holocaust. No. To be truly good one has to be outraged by evil and implacably hostile to injustice.
Rebecca Manley Pippert
That vice has often proved an emancipator of the mind, is one of the most humiliating, but, at the same time, one of the most unquestionable facts in history.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky (The Map of Life, Conduct, and Character)
There is no reality without interpretation; just as there is no innocent eye, there is no innocent ear.
E.H. Gombrich (Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation)
if we want to avoid suffering, we must start with ourselves, because all suffering comes from our own desires.
E.H. Gombrich (A Little History of the World (Little Histories))
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seamed with scars.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Their assemblies had taught the Athenians how to discuss all matters openly, with arguments for and against. This was good training in learning how to think.
E.H. Gombrich (A Little History of the World (Little Histories))
We view the past, and achieve our understanding of the past, only through the eyes of the present
Edward Hallett Carr
To S.H. & M.H.: Rot. E.H.
Nancy Springer (The Case of the Left-Handed Lady (Enola Holmes, #2))
There are a million and ten things from the subatomic to the cosmic that can rattle my nerves on a daily basis, and one of those things is my initials. M.E.H. Like the word: meh. Meh is basically a shoulder shrug, and that pretty much sums up the reaction I get from society at large.
Val Emmich (Dear Evan Hansen)
Think of it like this. If you are sad because you can't have something you want - maybe a book or a toy - you can do one of two things: you can do your best to get it, or you can stop wanting it. Either way, if you succeed, you won't be sad any more.
E.H. Gombrich
The artist, no less than the writer, needs a vocabulary before he can embark on a "copy" of reality.
E.H. Gombrich (Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation)
Nature reflected in art always reflects the artist's own mind, his predilections, his enjoyments, and therefore his moods.
E.H. Gombrich (The Story of Art)
It is the power of expectation rather than the power of conceptual knowledge that molds what we see in life not less than in art.
E.H. Gombrich (Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation)
The familiar will always remain the likely starting point for the rendering of the unfamiliar; an existing representation will always exert its spell over the artist even while he strives to record the truth.
E.H. Gombrich (Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation)
Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it forgoes revenge, and dares forgive an injury.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin
One of Russia’s tsars, around 1580, was known as Ivan the Terrible, and rightly so. Beside him Nero was mild.
E.H. Gombrich (A Little History of the World (Little Histories))
The best men are not those who have waited for chances but who have taken them; besieged chance, conquered the chance, and made chance the servitor. —E. H. CHAPIN
Ryan Holiday (The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph)
بالطبع يمكنك أن تتمنى،ويمكنك أن تحلم،ولكن أحيانا إذا أدمنت الاستمرار في التمني والحلم،فستصل بك الحال إلى أن تصدق أن ماتبتغيه قد تحقق.
E.H. Gombrich (A Little History of the World)
The history of the world is, sadly, not a pretty poem. It offers little variety, and it is nearly always the unpleasant things that are repeated, over and over again.
E.H. Gombrich (A Little History of the World)
What I have always loved best about the history of the world is that it is true. That all the extraordinary things we read were no less real than you and I are today.
E.H. Gombrich (A Little History of the World)
Los griegos decían que el asombro es el principio del conocimiento, y si dejamos de asombrarnos corremos el riesgo de dejar de conocer.
E.H. Gombrich (Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation)
I’m much better off as I am and I’m coming to the conclusion that the happiest people are the ones who have missed everything they thought they wanted.
E.H. Young (Chatterton Square (Virago Modern Classics))
While some monsters are born, others are created. But, the worst monsters are those who believe themselves to be heroes.
E.H. Night (The Four Before Me)
It’s a bad idea to try to prevent people from knowing their own history. If you want to do anything new you must first make sure you know what people have tried before.
E.H. Gombrich (A Little History of the World: Illustrated Edition (Little Histories))
It's 2 lines. Font like typewriter inked across the very bottom of his torso. h e l l i s e m p t y a n d a l l t h e d e v i l s a r e h e r e
Tahereh Mafi (Unravel Me (Shatter Me, #2))
China is, in fact, the only country in the world to be ruled for hundreds of years, not by the nobility, nor by soldiers, nor even by the priesthood, but by scholars.
E.H. Gombrich (A Little History of the World (Little Histories))
-What if I fall? -Oh but darling, what if you fly? E.H.
Erin Hanson
I was born, slipping on a symphony of broken melancholy; created of pencils and crayons; i was not supposed to be this way. i guess i am a "disappointment". i paint and draw. i like to write poetry. The things I excel at could fit inside my shoe." Excerpt from the poem,"Pain"written in 1995, by E.H. Cato(my maiden name) featured in Volume 2 of the Rantings & Ravings Series, 2013.
Emily H. Sturgill
The artist gives the beholder increasingly 'more to do,' he draws him into the magic circle of creation and allows him to experience something of the thrill of 'making' which had once been the privilege of the artist
E.H. Gombrich
The first man to understand the extraordinary magical power of applying mathematical calculation to things in nature was an Italian called Galileo Galilei.
E.H. Gombrich (A Little History of the World (Little Histories))
And it is because they seem so natural that they are so beautiful.
E.H. Gombrich (A Little History of the World (Little Histories))
A painting which represents a familiar subject in an unexpected way is often condemned for no better reason than that it does not seem right.
E.H. Gombrich (The Story of Art)
One Egyptian word for sculptor was actually 'He-who-keeps-alive.
E.H. Gombrich (The Story of Art)
Tidak pernah jiwa manusia tampil begitu kuat seperti saat mereka mengurungkan balas dendam dan berani memaafkan.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin
The artist creates his own elite, and the elite its own artists.
E.H. Gombrich (Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation)
In this type of situation it soon becomes all too clear that in the eyes of the supporters of this sort of movement, there is only one sin, disloyalty to the Führer, or leader, and only one virtue, absolute obedience.
E.H. Gombrich (A Little History of the World (Little Histories))
Voor de mengeling van volken die onze aarde bewonen, zal het steeds belangrijker worden dat we elkaar respecteren en tolereren, alleen al omdat we door de technische vooruitgang steeds dichter op elkaar worden gedrukt.
E.H. Gombrich
The more we become aware of the enormous pull in man to repeat what he has learned, the greater will be our admiration for those exceptional beings who could break this spell and make a significant advance on which others could build.
E.H. Gombrich (Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation)
What if I fall? "Oh, my dear, what if you fly?
E.H.
ولكن حتى قبل الجبال ، كانت هناك حيوانات مختلفة تمامًا عن حيوانات الحاضر.
E.H. Gombrich
Cyrus became lord of that great realm. His first act was to free all the peoples held in captivity by the Babylonians. Among them were the Jews, who went home to Jerusalem
E.H. Gombrich (A Little History of the World (Little Histories))
At first there’s nothing to see, but you feel a sort of weariness that tells you something is in the air.
E.H. Gombrich (A Little History of the World (Little Histories))
in those days they weren’t citizens as we know them, but old landowning families with vast estates of fields and meadows.
E.H. Gombrich (A Little History of the World (Little Histories))
CEOs having psychopathic tendencies and how their lack of empathy helped them in a corporate setting.
E.H. Reinhard (Drained (Agent Hank Rawlings, #1))
Porque es una máxima constante que nadie ve lo que son las cosas si no sabe lo que deberían ser.
E.H. Gombrich
It is not their standard of craftmanship which is different from ours, but their ideas.
E.H. Gombrich (The Story of Art)
XVXVI, or 10-5-10-5-1, yielded H-E-H-E-A, which, unless she wanted to show her derisive laughter, made no sense.
Laurie R. King (The Beekeeper's Apprentice (Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, #1))
Stoic is the best way; simple is the best way. The less you tell, the less people will ask.
E.H. Night (A Stray, Astray)
Actually I do not think that there are any wrong reasons for liking a statue or a picture. Someone may like a landscape painting because it reminds him of home, or a portrait because it reminds him of a friend. There is nothing wrong with that. All of us, when we see a painting, are bound to be reminded of a hundred-and-one things which influence our likes and dislikes. As long as these memories help us to enjoy what we see, we need not worry. It is only when some irrelevant memory makes us prejudiced, when we instinctively turn away from a magnificent picture of an alpine scene because we dislike climbing, that we should search our mind for the reason for the aversion which spoils a pleasure we might otherwise have had. There are wrong reasons for disliking a work of art.
E.H. Gombrich (The Story of Art)
love does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, it does not behave improperly, it does not seek its own advantage, it is not easily provoked, it bears no grudge, delights not in evil but rejoices only in the truth. It shelters all, trusts all, always hopes, always endures. Love is everlasting.
E.H. Gombrich (A Little History of the World (Little Histories))
What a painter inquires into is not the nature of the physical world but the nature of our reactions to it. He is not concerned with causes but with the mechanism of certain effects. His is a psychological problem-that of conjuring up a convincing image despite the fact that not one individual shade corresponds to what we call "reality." In order to understand this puzzle-as far as we can claim to understand it as yet-science had to explore the capacity of our minds to register relationships rather than individual elements.
E.H. Gombrich (Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation)
Trump plays at being president, in the way that a child might who is impressed with the evident bigness of the idea of that office, but who is not cognitively or emotionally ready to appreciate all that it involves.
Justin E.H. Smith (Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason)
All art originates in the human mind, in our reactions to the world rather than in the visible world itself, and it is precisely because all art is "conceptual" that all representations are recognizable by their style.
E.H. Gombrich
The term which psychology has coined for our relative imperviousness to the dizzy variations that go on in the world around us is "constancy." The color, shape, and brightness of things remain to us relatively constant, even though we may notice some variation with the change of distance, illumination, angle of vision, and so on.
E.H. Gombrich (Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation)
There can be no question that parrots have more intellect than any other kind of bird, and it is this that makes them such favourite pets and brings upon them so many sorrows. ...Men will buy them ... and carry them off to all quarters of the native town, intending, I doubt not, to treat them kindly; but "the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel", and confinement in a solitary cell, the discipline with which we reform hardened criminals, is misery enough to a bird with an active mind, without the superadded horrors of ... life in a tin case, hung from a nail in the wall of a dark shop... Why does the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals never look into the woes of parrots? ... However happy you make her captivity, imagination will carry her at times to the green field and blue sky, and she fancies herself somewhere near the sun, heading a long file of exultant companions in swift career through the whistling air. Then she opens her mouth and rings out a wild salute to all parrots in the far world below her.
E.H. Aitken
Scripture is infallible; other teachers... are liable to lead into error. To place above Scripture and prefer to it, human traditions, doctrines, and ordinances, is nothing but an act of blind presumption." From John Wycliff's 'Of the Truth of Holy Scripture', 1378 A.D.
E.H. Broadbent- The Pilgrim Church
He sent messengers ahead to meet Alexander and offered him half his kingdom and his daughter in marriage, if only he would agree not to fight. ‘If I were Alexander, I’d take it,’ said Alexander’s friend, Parmenios. ’And so would I, if I were Parmenios,’ was Alexander’s reply.
E.H. Gombrich (A Little History of the World (Little Histories))
That power of holding on to an image that Ruskin describes so admirably is not the power of the eidetic; it is that faculty of keeping a large number of relationships present in one's mind that distinguishes all mental achievement, be it that of the chess player, the composer, or the great artist.
E.H. Gombrich (Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation)
They may have heard that Rembrandt was famous for his chiaroscuro...so they nod wisely when they see a Rembrandt, mumble 'wonderful chiaroscuro,' and wander onto the next picture. I want to be quite frank about this danger of half-knowledge and snobbery, for we are all apt to succumb to such temptation.
E.H. Gombrich (The Story of Art)
She wove golden rays of sunshine, Into a long and flowing dress, That left the scent on everything she touched, Of nature's sweet caress, Everywhere the girl did go, The flowers would all bloom, And she could chase the lonely feeling, Out of every room, She could drive out all your sadness, And cause a frozen heart to thaw, She's paint the sky pink every morning, But nobody ever saw, No one thought to thank her, For the warmth upon their skin, Or for chasing all their demons, From where the night-time's breath had been, So she thought she wasn't needed, She could leave and they'd not care, But they'd taken her for granted, Since her light was always there, Because you never thank the ground, Until you know how it feels to fall, Or just how much you need the sun, Until it doesn't rise at all.
E.H
Never favour those who flatter you most, but hold rather to those who risk your displeasure for your own good. Never neglect business for pleasure, organise your life so that there is time in it for relaxation and entertainment. Give the business of government your full attention. Inform yourself as much as you can before taking any decision. Make every effort to get to know men of distinction, so that you may call on them when you need them. Be courteous to all, speak hurtfully to no man.
E.H. Gombrich (A Little History of the World (Little Histories))
Later in his life Gautama told the story of his decision in a sermon: ‘And so it came about that, in the full freshness and enjoyment of my youth, in glowing health, my hair still black, and against the wishes of my weeping and imploring elders, I shaved my head and beard, dressed in coarse robes, and forsook the shelter of my home.
E.H. Gombrich (A Little History of the World (Little Histories))
أعرف راهبا بوذيا حكيما قال يوما في حديث له مع أبناء وطنه إنه يود أن يفهم لم نعتقد نحن أن شخصا يتباهى بأنه الأذكى، الأقوى، الأشجع أو الأكثر موهبة على الأرض يبدو سخيفا وحرجا لنفسه، بينما عوضا عن "أنا" عندما يقول هذا الشخص "نحن الشعب الأذكى الأقوى الأشجع والأكثر موهبة على سطح الأرض" يصفق له أبناء وطنه بحماس ويسمونه وطنيا. لا يوجد شيئ وطني في ذلك . يستطيع الإنسان أن يتعلق بوطنه مند دون الحاجة إلى الإصرار على أن بقية سكان العالم لاقيمة لهم. لكن عندما اقتنع مزيد ومزيد من الناس بهذا النوع من الهراء، أصبح التهديد للسلام عظيما.
E.H. Gombrich
I believe what we call the Renaissance artists' preoccupation with structure has a very practical basis in their needs to know the schema of things. For in a way our very concept of "structure," the idea of some basic scaffolding or armature that determines the "essence" of things, reflects our need for a schema with which to grasp the infinite variety of this world of change. No wonder these issues have become somewhat clouded by metaphysical fog which settled over the discussions of art in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
E.H. Gombrich (Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation)
An interesting thought: "...Church history has been written by representatives of the dominant churches and from a party point of view..." p290
E.H. Broadbent- The Pilgrim Church
Every great doctrine revealed in the Scripture has a balancing truth and both are necessary to a knowledge of the whole truth." p181
E.H. Broadbent- The Pilgrim Church
But Louis XIV had clever ministers, mainly men of humble origin chosen for their outstanding ability.
E.H. Gombrich (A Little History of the World (Little Histories))
so much gold reached Europe from India and America that burghers grew richer and richer as knights and landowners grew poorer and poorer.
E.H. Gombrich (A Little History of the World (Little Histories))
Routine shortens and variety lengthens time, and it is therefore in the power of men to do something to regulate its pace. A life with many landmarks, a life which is much subdivided when those subdivisions are not of the same kind, and when new and diverse interests, impressions, and labours follow each other in swift and distinct successions, seems the most long…
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
We receive no message in the strict sense of the word when a friend enters a room and says "good morning." The word has no function to select from an ensemble of possible states, though situations are conceivable in which it would have. The most interesting consequence of this way of looking at communication is the general conclusion that the greater the probability of a symbol's occurrence in any given situation, the smaller will be its information content. Where we can anticipate we need not listen. It is in this context that projection will do for perception.
E.H. Gombrich (Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation)
Propaganda, as we know to our cost, is the art of imposing a pattern on reality, and to impose it so successfully that the victim can no longer conceive it in different terms. Such a pattern will be the more likely to exert its spell the deeper it is rooted in tradition, the more affinity it has with the typical nightmares and dreams of mankind. The Messianic Rulder who brings back the Golden Age is precisely such a perennial dream, and we have seen that it did exert the spell on subsequent generations who saw the teeming life of the real Quattrocento fall into this deceptively simple configuration.
E.H. Gombrich (Norm and Form: On the Renaissance 1)
The possibility that all recognition of images is connected with projections and visual anticipations is strengthened by the results of recent experiments. It appears that if you show an observer the image of a pointing hand or arrow, he will tend to shift its location somehow in the direction of the movement. Without this tendency of ours to see potential movement in the form of anticipation, artists would never have been able to create the suggestion of speed in stationary images.
E.H. Gombrich (Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation)
We are like that. Each one of us no more than a tiny glimmering things, a sparkling droplet on the waves of time which flow past beneath us into an unknown, misty future. We leap up, look around us and, before we know it, we vanish again. We can hardly be seen in the Great River of time. New drops keep rising to the surface. And what we call our fate is no more than our struggle in that great multitude of droplets in the rise and fall of one wave. But we must make use of that moment. It is worth the effort.
E.H. Gombrich (A Little History of the World)
There is one type of scientific illustration in which this effect of scale on impression is acknowledged officially, as it were. Geographers who draw sections of mountain ranges will exaggerate the relation of height to width according to a stated proportion. They have found that a true rendering of vertical relationship looks false. Our mind refuses to accept the fact that the distance of 28,000 feet to which Mount Everest soars from sea level is no more than the distance of just over 5 miles which a car traverses in a matter of minutes.
E.H. Gombrich (Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation)
Styles, like languages, differ in the sequence of articulation and in the number of questions they allow the artist to ask; and so complex is the information that reaches us from the visible world that no picture will ever embody it all. This is not due to the subjectivity of vision but to its richness. Where the artist has to copy a human product he can, of course, produce a facsimile which is indistinguishable from the original. The forger of banknotes succeeds only too well in effacing his personality and the limitations of a period style.
E.H. Gombrich (Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation)
P h y j s l y d d q f d z x g a s g z z q q e h x g k f n d r x u j u g I o c y t d x v k s b x h h u y p o h d v y r y m h u h p u y d k j o x p h e t o z l s l e t n p m v f f o v p d p a j x h y y n o j y g g a y m e q y n f u q l n m v l y f g s u z m q I z t l b q q y u g s q e u b v n r c r e d g r u z b l r m x y u h q h p z d r r g c r o h e p q x u f I v v r p l p h o n t h v d d q f h q s n t z h h h n f e p m q k y u u e x k t o g z g k y u u m f v I j d q d p z j q s y k r p l x h x q r y m v k l o h h h o t o z v d k s p p s u v j h d.
Jules Verne (Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon)
No existe,realmente, el Arte. Tan sólo hay artistas. Éstos eran en otros tiempos hombres que cogían tierra coloreada y dibujaban toscamente las formas de un bisonte sobre las paredes de una cueva; hoy, compran sus colores y trazan carteles para las estaciones del metro. No hay ningún mal en llamar arte a todas estas actividades, mientras tengamos en cuenta que tal palabra puede significar muchas cosas distintas, en épocas y lugares diversos, y mientras advirtamos que el arte, escrita con A mayúscula, no existe, pues el Arte con a mayúscula tiene por esencia ser un fantasma y un ídolo.
E.H. Gombrich
The soul which fathoms every league of the celestial arc--knows, as a mariner the sea, the distant latitudes where comets flame, and worlds career, and constellations shake their awful clusters--wanders amid the spectral nebula, and makes suns and systems to be but glittering beads upon the aspiring thread of its induction, cannot perish. There is a future life. In a universe so spherical and whole as this, reason argues that its own incompleteness and capacity for more are suggestive--are prophetical. Under-shadows and cross-lights of mystery, these filmy depths of present being, shudder in sympathy with something beyond.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin
In Altdorfer's painting, infinitude acquires a special pathos and beauty through its religious associations, but in principle, as Nietzsche knew, all claims to copy nature must lead to the demand of representing the infinite. The amount of information reaching us from the visible world is incalculably large, and the artist's medium is inevitably restricted and granular. Even the most meticulous realist can accommodate only a limited number of marks on his panel, and though he may try to smooth out the transition between his dabs of paint beyond the threshold of visibility, in the end he will always have to rely on suggestion when it comes to representing the infinitely small.
E.H. Gombrich (Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation)
A member of a guild was bound to support his fellow members and not steal their trade, nor must he cheat his own customers with poor goods. He was expected to treat his apprentices and journeymen well and do his best to uphold the good name of his trade and his town. He was, so to speak, one of God’s craftsmen, just as a knight was a warrior fighting for God.
E.H. Gombrich (A Little History of the World (Little Histories))
A művészet valójában nem létezik, csak művészek vannak. Régen az ilyen ember fogott egy marék színes agyagot, és bölényeket festett a barlang falára. A mai művészek többnyire boltban vásárolják a festéket, és talán plakátokat rajzolnak, vagy mást csinálnak, esetleg sok mindent a rajzoláson kívül, akárcsak a régiek. Nem hiba, ha az ilyen foglalkozásokat művészetnek mondjuk, csak nem szabad elfelejtenünk, hogy ez a szó koronként és helyenként mást-mást jelent, és az a bizonyos nagybetűs Művészet valójában nem létezik. Ez a nagybetűs Művészet ma már inkább valamilyen fantom vagy fétis. Vérig sértheted a művészt, ha azt mondod neki, hogy az, amit festett, mintázott, a maga nemében jó, csak éppen nem "művészet". És alaposan megzavarhatod azt, aki egy festményben gyönyörködik, ha közlöd vele, hogy ami neki annyira tetszik a képen, az nem a művészet, hanem valami más.
E.H. Gombrich (The Story of Art)
[I]n one sense Coismo did represent such a new era — the uomo disarmato without ancestors and without claim to to war-like prowess, indeed even without overt claim to power, would make the poet cast about for some extraordinary formula. And was their feeling quite unjustified, in the face of such a person, that the age of iron had begun to yield to the age of gold — albeit in a slightly different sense? To quote Professor Jacob's relazione on that very point: "The Europe of chivalry had gone, the armies were paind and the risks of war calculated in financial terms." No wonder that Cosimo, in Giovanni Avogadro's eulogy, is made to say: "Si num vincunt, hercle est fas vincere nobis" — "If money can conquer, by jingo we shall". It is a thoroughly unheroic picture. But this is precisely the aspect of the Renaissance which Professor C. Backuis so aptly characterized as "civism".
E.H. Gombrich (Norm and Form: On the Renaissance 1)
All thinking is sorting, classifying. All perceiving relates to expectations and therefore to comparisons. When we say that from the air houses appear like toys to us, or human beings like ants, we mean, I suggest, that we are startled by the unfamiliar sight of a house that compares to the familiar sight of a toy on the nursery floor. We feel that but for our knowledge we might have been deceived and have almost mistaken the one for the other. Our guesses and methods of testing them have become somewhat unsettled, and we try to describe the experience by indicating possibilities which flitted through our minds. But, to repeat, there is no "objective" sense in which a human being can look "the size of an ant" simply because an ant crawling on our pillow will look gigantic in comparison with a man in the distance. In professor E.G. Boring's words, "Phenomenal size, like physical size is relative and has no meaning except as a relation between objects.
E.H. Gombrich (Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation)
Have you ever watched a storm approaching on a hot summer’s day? It’s especially spectacular in the mountains. At first there’s nothing to see, but you feel a sort of weariness that tells you something is in the air. Then you hear thunder - just a rumble here and there- you can’t quite tell where it is coming from. All of a sudden, the mountains seem strangely near. There isn't a breath of wind, yet dense clouds pile up in the sky. And now the mountains have almost vanished behind a wall of haze. Clouds rush in from all sides, but still there’s no wind. There’s more thunder now, and everything around looks eir and menacing. You wait and wait. And then, suddenly, it erupts. At first it is almost a release. The storm descends into the valley. There’s thunder and lightning everywhere. The rain clatters down in huge drops. The storm is trapped in the narrow cleft of the valley and thunderclaps echo and reverberate off the steep mountain sides. The wind buffets you from every angle. And when the storm finally moves away, leaving in its place a clear, still, starlit night, you can hardly remember where those thunderclouds were, let alone which thunderclap belonged to which flash of lightning.
E.H. Gombrich (A Little History of the World)
If all art is conceptual, the issue is rather simple. For concepts, like pictures, cannot be true or false. They can only be more or less useful for the formation of descriptions. The words of a language, like pictorial formulas, pick out from the flux of events a few signposts which allow us to give direction to our fellow speakers in that game of "Twenty Questions" in which we are engaged. Where the needs of users are similar, the signposts will tend to correspond. We can mostly find equivalent terms in English, French, German, and Latin, and hence the idea has taken root that concepts exist independently of language as the constituents of "reality." But the English language erects a signpost on the roadfork between "clock" and "watch" where the German has only "Uhr." The sentence from the German primer, "Meine Tante hat eine Uhr," leaves us in doubt whether the aunt has a clock or watch. Either of the two translations may be wrong as a description of a fact. In Swedish, by the way, there is an additional roadfork to distinguish between aunts who are "father's sisters," those who are "mother's sisters," and those who are just ordinary aunts. If we were to play our game in Swedish we would need additional questions to get at the truth about the timepiece.
E.H. Gombrich
Hildebrand, too, challenged the ideals of scientific naturalism by an appeal to the psychology of perception: if we attempt to analyze our mental images to discover their primary constituents, we will find them composed of sense data derived from vision and from memories of touch and movement. A sphere, for instance, appears to the eye as a flat disk; it is touch which informs us of the properties of space and form. Any attempt on the part of the artist to eliminate this knowledge is futile, for without it he would not perceive the world at all. His task is, on the contrary, to compensate for the absence of movement in his work by clarifying his image and thus conveying not only visual sensations but also those memories of touch which enable us to reconstitute the three-dimensional form in our minds.
E.H. Gombrich (Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation)
Music of the Grid: A Poem in Two Equations _________________________ The masses of particles sound the frequencies with which space vibrates, when played. This Music of the Grid betters the old mystic mainstay, "Music of the Spheres," both in fantasy and in realism. LET US COMBINE Einstein's second law m=E/C^2 (1) with another fundamental equation, the Planck-Einstein-Schrodinger formula E = hv The Planck-Einstein-Schrodinger formula relates the energy E of a quantum-mechanical state to the frequency v at which its wave function vibrates. Here h is Planck's constant. Planck introduced it in his revolutionary hypothesis (1899) that launched quantum theory: that atoms emit or absorb light of frequency v only in packets of energy E = hv. Einstein went a big step further with his photon hypothesis (1905): that light of frequency v is always organized into packets with energy E = hv. Finally Schrodinger made it the basis of his basic equation for wave functions-the Schrodinger equation (1926). This gave birth to the modern, universal interpretation: the wave function of any state with energy E vibrates at a frequency v given by v = E/h. By combining Einstein with Schrodinger we arrive at a marvelous bit of poetry: (*) v = mc^2/h (*) The ancients had a concept called "Music of the Spheres" that inspired many scientists (notably Johannes Kepler) and even more mystics. Because periodic motion (vibration) of musical instruments causes their sustained tones, the idea goes, the periodic motions of the planets, as they fulfill their orbits, must be accompanied by a sort of music. Though picturesque and soundscape-esque, this inspiring anticipation of multimedia never became a very precise or fruitful scientific idea. It was never more than a vague metaphor, so it remains shrouded in equation marks: "Music of the Spheres." Our equation (*) is a more fantastic yet more realistic embodiment of the same inspiration. Rather than plucking a string, blowing through a reed, banging on a drumhead, or clanging a gong, we play the instrument that is empty space by plunking down different combinations of quarks, gluons, electrons, photons,... (that is, the Bits that represent these Its) and let them settle until they reach equilibrium with the spontaneous activity of Grid. Neither planets nor any material constructions compromise the pure ideality of our instrument. It settles into one of its possible vibratory motions, with different frequencies v, depending on how we do the plunking, and with what. These vibrations represent particles of different mass m, according to (*). The masses of particles sound the Music of the Grid.
Frank Wilczek (The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces)