Irving Stone Quotes

An artist without ideas is a mendicant; barren, he goes begging among the hours.

~ Irving Stone

We...believe that art is religious, because it is one of man's highest aspirations. There is no such thing as pagan art, only good and bad art.

~ Irving Stone

There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books.

~ Irving Stone

He had never believed that spirituality had to be anemic or aesthetic.

~ Irving Stone

Talent is cheap, dedication is expensive. It will cost you your life.

~ Irving Stone

He had been standing still; for an artist, one of the more painful forms of death.

~ Irving Stone

A new doctor had been sent for, Lazzaro of Pavia, who had administered to Lorenzo a pulverized mixture of diamonds and pearls. This hitherto infallible medicine had failed to help.

~ Irving Stone

He was a victim of his own integrity, which forced him to do his best, even when he would have preferred to do nothing at all.

~ Irving Stone

From this vantage point he came to a realization that everything that had happened to him before this had been a journey upward through time, everything that occurred after it a descent. If he could not control his fate, why be born?

~ Irving Stone

You can only have the courage and strength to do what you think is right. It may turn out to be wrong, but you will at least have done it, and that is the important thing. We must act according to the best dictates of our reason, and then leave God to judge its ultimate value.

~ Irving Stone

Bleed me of art, and there won't be enough liquid left in me to spit! [Michelangelo Buonorotti]

~ Irving Stone

He believed that every individual was responsible for his conduct on earth, that there was a judge within. Could even a blazingly Christ inflict greater retribution? Could Dante's Charon in his rowboat on the river Acheron whip the miscreants into a deeper, more everlasting hell than man's unvarnished verdict of himself?

~ Irving Stone

When I compare myself to the other fellows there is something stiff and awkward about me, I look as if I had been in prison for ten years.

~ Irving Stone

What the world thought made little difference. Rembrandt had topaint. Whether he painted well or badly didn't matter; painting was thestuff that held him together as a man. The chief value of art, Vincent, liesin the expression it gives to the artist. Rembrandt fulfilled what he knewto be his life purpose; that justified him. Even if his work had beenworthless, he would have been a thousand times more successful than ifhe had put down his desire and become the richest merchant inAmsterdam. (Mendes Da Costa

~ Irving Stone

It's not macho to read? Nonsense. Reading is a stouthearted activity, disporting courage, keenness, stick-to-itness. It is also, in my experience, one of the most thrilling and enduring delights of life, equal to a home run, a slamdunk, or breaking the four-minute mile.

~ Irving Stone