Irving Stone - The Agony and the Ecstasy (1961)

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To try to understand another human being, to grapple for his ultimate depths, that is the most dangerous of human endeavors.

Irving Stone
He had always loved God. In his darkest hours he cried out, "God did not create us to abandon us."

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
The most perfect guide is nature. Continue without fail to draw something every day.

Irving Stone
Talent is cheap; dedication is expensive. It will cost you your life.

Irving Stone
There is no thrill of mortal danger to surpass that of a lone man trying to create something that never existed before.

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

Irving Stone
One should not become an artist because he can, but because he must. It is only for those who would be miserable without it.

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

Irving Stone
He sat before the mirror of the second-floor bedroom stretching his lean cheeks with their high bone ridges, the flat broad forehead, and ears too far back on the head, the dark hair curling forward in thatches, the amber-colored eyes wide-set but heavy-lidded.

Irving Stone
Drawing is the poet's written line, set down to see if there be a story worth telling, a truth worth revealing.

Irving Stone
And rout the magical mystical moonlight with fierce proof of its own greater power to light, to heat, to make everything known.

Irving Stone
Pleasure is one of the most important things in life, as important as food or drink.

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

Irving Stone
Listen, my friend, all forms that exist in God's universe can be found in the human figure. A man's body and face can tell everything he represents. So how could I ever exhaust my interest in it?

Irving Stone