quotes & quips: action is eloquence

A collection of quotes which inspire me ... from the sublime to the ridiculous ... so I will approach the work seriously and so that I don't take myself too seriously. As we approach the retreat I find myself always needing inspiration - some in seeming-contradiction. Please comment and add quotes. I always hunger for more inspiration or a good laugh. -- ML

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Action is eloquence. -- William Shakespeare

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. -- Pablo Picasso

My imagination has to be powerful enough to dictate to my heart, to my body, to my narrow ideas. To develop our imagination means to lift it up so high that it is inspiring me as a free thing. – Michael Chekhov

A theatrical production is, or should be, a slice through the thickness of the culture from which it emerges, and that is speaking not only to its audience but to other plays, to painting and to dance, to music and to all forms of human expression by which at any moment we read out time. – Elia Kazan

My past is my wisdom to use today. . . my future is my wisdom yet to experience. Be in the present because that is where life resides. -- Gene Oliver

Acting is not a thought process, it’s something that happens with the body. And what happens to the body ignites your acting mechanism. -- Nikos Psacharopoulos

In the theater there should be neither naturalism nor realism, but fantastic realism. Rightly found theatrical methods impart genuine life to the play upon the stage. The methods can be learned, but the form must be created. It has to be convinced by one’s fantasy. That is why I call it fantastic realism. Such a form exists and should exist in every art. – Eugene Vakhtangov

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. -- Rene Descartes

I love acting. It is so much more real than life. -- Oscar Wilde

You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. -- Mark Twain

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything. -- Eugene Delacroix

Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art. -- Tom Stoppard

What we are after is a consciousness of complete freedom. – Harley Granville-Barker

Give to the actor and his work the atmosphere in which they can breathe more freely and more deeply. – Max Reinhardt

The thing an actor needs the most is courage. – Joan Littlewood

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way... you become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions. -- Aristotle

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. -- Henry Ward Beecher

Actors and directors are the servants of the play, aren’t they? – Laurence Olivier

If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction. -- William Shakespeare

Craft has been part of the society for millions of years. If you are a carpenter, you have inside you the faith that the table you make will function, that it will stand up. You come along later and say,” I would like to carve that table, to add to it.” So who made the table? The carpenter made the table and you made the table. The carpenter’s name is Cellini, but I am no longer interested in the rare person Cellini. I am more interested in the craftsman – you. The writer gives you the bare outlines. He can never convey the experience. Your contribution is the ability to take life in and convey its truth. That is Mr. Ibsen’s definition of truth for the artist. Your talent is in your craft. Craft is what finally transforms the dead factors into living ones – from “theatrical” to human, artifice to art – through that secret ingredient: the actor’s imagination. – Stella Adler

Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me leave to do my utmost. -- Isak Dineson

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. -- Albert Einstein

No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en; In brief, sir, study what you most affect. -- William Shakespeare

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. -- Carl Jung

I think that each step of acting requires the actor to return to a conscious awareness of what he is doing. Still, most of the creative work is done in that dream life between thinking and fantasy, and requires sometimes that the actor rest, and let the image move itself in his mind…One has to be able to imagine an alternative realm of behavior expression in order to play it. The spectator will feel that what is true on the stage is what most represents himself – that realm which he most identifies with as his “real life” and perhaps that one which he most inhabits….Everything we do changes us a little, even when we purport to be indifferent to what we’ve done. And what we witness, we can also do. – Joseph Chaikin

Photographers do this for a living, every single day -- they point their lenses toward every single corner of our world and somehow make the mundane mesmerizing through their artistic eye. It's all a matter of being aware of your surroundings and realizing that there are some really amazing and interesting things to look at, even if it may just be something so simple as a wall being covered up by paint. -- Ward Jenkins

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education. -- George Bernard Shaw

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people. -- Arthur Schopenhauer

An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world. -- George Santayana

I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, 'The Beatles did'. -- Kurt Vonnegut

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way. -- Charles Bukowski

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. -- Oscar Wilde

There is grandeur in stillness, and it is the eye that is the mind’s signal and the soul’s interpreter. It is the actor’s chief business to express the emotion of the human heart. The eye discloses the tumult that rages within, and speaks of the inner thought even more completely than can the tongue. It has a language of its own – an expression that is as far above any language as the eternal firmament is above the ephemeral butterfly. – Julia Marlowe

We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are - that is the fact. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel. -- Piet Mondrian

I understand a fury in your words, But not the words. -- William Shakespeare

I live in company with a body, a silent companion, exacting and eternal. -- Eugene Delacroix

Acting begins with a tiny inner movement so slight that it is almost completely invisible. — Peter Brook

The actor must be ready to be absolutely sincere. It is like a step toward the summit of the actor’s organism in which are united consciousness and instinct. — Jerzy Grotowski

I prize the poetic above all else in the theatre. — Arthur Miller

Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing. -- Sir Ralph Richardson

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. -- Edmund Burke

Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made. -- George Burns

The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape... -- Pablo Picasso

No vision and you perish; no ideal, and you’re lost. Your heart must ever cherish some faith, at any cost, Some hope, some dream to cling to, some rainbow in the sky, Some melody to sing to, some service that is high. — Harriet Du Autremont

Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before. -- Edith Wharton

Life, with all its pains and sorrows, is a beautiful and a precious gift; and the actor’s art is to reproduce this beautiful thing, giving due emphasis to those royal virtues and those stormy passions which sway the destinies of mankind…its present intention may be to interest and amuse, but its deeper purpose is earnest, intense, sincere. — Sir Henry Irving

The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation. -- Auguste Rodin

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. -- Albert Einstein

The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Artists can color the sky red because they know it's blue. Those of us who aren't artists must color things the way they really are or people might think we're stupid. -- Jules Feiffer

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist. -- Albert Einstein

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible. -- Arthur C. Clarke

ONE WORD OF TRUTH OUTWEIGHS THE WORLD." -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all. -- Walt Whitman

When you're through changing, you're through. -- Bruce Barton

Luxury is the wolf at the door and its fangs are the vanities and conceits germinated by success. When an artist learns this, he knows where the danger is. -- Tennessee Williams

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently: for in the very torrent, tempest, and—as I may say—whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness…. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure Now, this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others…. Go, make you ready. – William Shakespeare

The brain is a wonderful servant but a terrible master. -- Anon

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better. -- Andre Gide

It's about what YOU are going to do with the short time you have left on this earth. -- Hugh Macleod

You must work each month, every day, get in front of the audience all the time. Our century on this garden becomes very short and your gifts must be seen. It is our profession …. Work all the time. – Janet Selimova

The point is to develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition and to guide the child over to important fields for society. Such a school demands from the teacher that he be a kind of artist in his province. -- Albert Einstein

Other than that, I have no opinion. -- ML