Quotations by Famous Hispanics

Baltasar Gracian

"A bad manner spoils everything, even reason and justice; a good one supplies everything, gilds a No, sweetens a truth, and adds a touch of beauty to old age itself."
"A beautiful woman should break her mirror early."
"A single lie destroys a whole reputation of integrity. "
"A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends. "
"Aspire rather to be a hero than merely appear one. "
"At twenty a man is a peacock, at thirty a lion, at forty a camel, at fifty a serpent, at sixty a dog, at seventy an ape, at eighty a nothing at all. "
"Attempt easy tasks as if they were difficult, and difficult as if they were easy; in the one case that confidence may not fall asleep, in the other that it may not be dismayed."
"Begin with another's to end with your own."
"Better mad with the rest of the world than wise alone. "
"Dreams will get you nowhere, a good kick in the pants will take you a long way."
"Even knowledge has to be in the fashion, and where it is not, it is wise to affect ignorance."
"Fortune pays you sometimes for the intensity of her favors by the shortness of their duration. She soon tires of carrying any one long on her shoulders."
"Friendship multiplies the good of life and divides the evil."
"Great ability develops and reveals itself increasingly with every new assignment."
"Have friends. 'Tis a second existence."
"He that can live alone resembles the brute beast in nothing, the sage in much, and God in everything."
"He that communicates his secret to another makes himself that other's slave."
"He that has satisfied his thirst turns his back on the well."
"Hope has a good memory, gratitude a bad one."
"I strive to be brief, and I become obscure."
"It is a great piece of skill to know how to guide your luck even while waiting for it."
"It is better to have too much courtesy than too little, provided you are not equally courteous to all, for that would be injustice."
"It is better to sleep on things beforehand than lie awake about them afterwards."
"It is good to vary in order that you may frustrate the curious, especially those who envy you."
"Let him that hath no power of patience retire within himself, though even there he will have to put up with himself."
"Let the first impulse pass, wait for the second."
"Luck can be assisted. It is not all chance with the wise."
"Many have had their greatness made for them by their enemies."
"Nature scarcely ever gives us the very best; for that we must have recourse to art."
"Never contend with a man who has nothing to lose."
"Never do anything when you are in a temper, for you will do everything wrong."
"Never have a companion that casts you in the shade."
"Never open the door to the lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it."
"Nothing arouses ambition so much in the heart as the trumpet-clang of another's fame."
"One must pass through the circumference of time before arriving at the center of opportunity."
"Respect yourself if you would have others respect you."
"The envious die not once, but as oft as the envied win applause."
"The wise does at once what the fool does at last."
"There is always time to add a word, never to withdraw one."
"There is none who cannot teach somebody something, and there is none so excellent but he is excelled."
"Things do not pass for what they are, but for what they seem. Most things are judged by their jackets."
"To be at ease is better than to be at business. Nothing really belongs to us but time, which even he has who has nothing else."
"To equal a predecessor, one must have twice they worth."
"To oblige persons often costs little and helps much."
"True knowledge lies in knowing how to live."
"Watchfulness is the only guard against cunning. Be intent on his intentions. Many succeed in making others do their own affairs, and unless you possess the key to their motives you may at any moment be forced to take their chestnuts out of the fire to the damage of your own fingers. "
"When desire dies, fear is born."
Federico García Lorca
"Besides black art, there is only automation and mechanization."
"The only things that the United States has given to the world are skyscrapers, jazz, and cocktails. That is all. And in Cuba, in our America, they make much better cocktails."
"New York is something awful, something monstrous. I like to walk the streets, lost, but I recognize that New York is the world's greatest lie. New York is Senegal with machines."
"There is nothing more poetic and terrible than the skyscrapers' battle with the heavens that cover them. Snow, rain, and mist highlight, drench, or conceal the vast towers, but those towers, hostile to mystery and blind to any sort of play, shear off the rain's tresses and shine their three thousand swords through the soft swan of the fog."
"In Spain, the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country in the world."
Pablo Picasso
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. "
" Painting is just another way of keeping a diary. "
" Everything you can imagine is real. "
" Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one's bath like a lump of sugar. "
" To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final blow the coup de grace for the painter as well as for the picture. "
" Work is necessary for man. Man invented the alarm clock. "
" Youth has no age. "
" Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art. "
" It is your work in life that is your ultimate seduction. "
" I paint objects as I think them not as I see them. "
" It means nothing to me. I have no opinion about it, and I don't care. "
" To copy others is necessary, but to copy oneself is pathetic. "
" Museums are just a lot of lies, and the people who make art their business are mostly imposters. We have infected the pictures in museums with all our stupidities, all our mistakes, all our poverty of spirit. We have turned them into petty and ridiculous things. "
" When you start with a portrait and search for a pure form, a clear volume, through successive eliminations, you arrive inevitably at the egg. Likewise, starting with the egg and following the same process in reverse, one finishes with the portrait. "
" You mustn't always believe what I say. Questions tempt you to tell lies, particularly when there is no answer. "
" The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about it. The more technique there is, the less there is. "
" Sculpture is the best comment that a painter can make on painting. "
" If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes. "
" We must not discriminate between things. Where things are concerned there are no class distinctions. We must pick out what is good for us where we can find it. "
" Sculpture is the art of the intelligence. "
" Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness. "
" Accidents, try to change them, it's impossible. The accidental reveals man. "
" Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions. "
" Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? no. Just as one can never learn how to paint. "
" I am always doing things I can't do, that's how I get to do them. "
" Every child is an artist. The problem is to remain an artist once they grow up. "
" Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction. "
" We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies. "
" Through art we express our conception of what nature is not. "
" The people who make art their business are mostly impostors. "
" Often while reading a book one feels that the author would have preferred to paint rather than write; one can sense the pleasure he derives from describing a landscape or a person, as if he were painting what he is saying, because deep in his heart he would have preferred to use brushes and colors. "
" If I spit, they will take my spit and frame it as great art. "
" What might be taken for a precocious genius is the genius of childhood. When the child grows up, it disappears without a trace. It may happen that this boy will become a real painter some day, or even a great painter. But then he will have to begin everything again, from zero. "
" It takes a long time to become young. "
" Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. "
" Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth. "
" I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful? One must speak of problems in painting! "
" Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs. "
" One does a whole painting for one peach and people think just the opposite -- that particular peach is but a detail. "
" If everybody is looking for it, then nobody is finding it. If we were cultured, we would not be conscious of lacking culture. We would regard it as something natural and would not make so much fuss about it. And if we knew the real value of this word we would be cultured enough not to give it so much importance. "
" Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He recopies it five times, ten times, always clarifying the line. He's convinced that the last, the most stripped down, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and in fact, most of the time, it was the first. In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt. "
" I do not seek, I find. "
" The chief enemy of creativity is good taste. "
" Disciples be damned. It's not interesting. It's only the masters that matter. Those who create. "
" God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat. He has no real style. He just keeps on trying other things. "
" What is a face, really? Its own photo? Its make-up? Or is it a face as painted by such or such painter? That which is in front? Inside? Behind? And the rest? Doesn't everyone look at himself in his own particular way? Deformations simply do not exist. "
" Drink to me. "
" I who have been involved with all styles of painting can assure you that the only things that fluctuate are the waves of fashion which carry the snobs and speculators; the number of true connoisseurs remains more or less the same. "
" It is personality with a penny's worth of talent. Error which chances to rise above the commonplace. "
" The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima. "

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	Nicole Cardillo BellaOnline's Quotations Editor