Top 27 Quotes & Sayings by Eli Siegel

Is there in every work of art something which shows reality as one and also something which shows reality as many and diverse? - must every work of art have a simultaneous presence of oneness and manyness, unity and variety?

In reality opposites are one; art shows this.

If a mistake is not a stepping stone, it is a mistake.

The universe is Why, How, and What, in any order, and all at once.

The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites.

Every work of art is about everything.

One of the things called forth by the Imagist movement in poetry was neatness; and when we say keenness, we mean neatness. A knife that is keen is also a knife that cuts neatly; it isn't brutal. Sharpness is different from brutality. Brutality is clumsy: it is wide - it has a lot of fist and thumb and no delicate finger.

We should see the desire for neatness, the desire for sharp impressions, as a desire in art.

In order to be deep, we sometimes have to cut through and cut apart. That is to be seen in the common phrase, 'Cut it out!' The reason is that this thing is seen as superfluous and therefore it should be excised, as a growth, unnecessary, should be excised.

Music for a long time has been telling what the world is like. What music has to say now, in a manner that has both logic and emotion in it, is that the world has a structure persons could like; be stronger by.... [If] the world is the oneness of opposites - and music says it is - the world is given an everlastingly sensible basis; for what could be more sensible that to be calm and forceful at once, reposeful and intense at once?

Originality in art puts charm where it wasn't.

There is not one thing that music does which does not say something about how a person should organize himself, too.

To see the outside world as the same stuff as our most secret or unknown thoughts is a fine necessity.

The purpose of photography is to create an emotion about the world through what has been carefully seen and selected.

True individuality is the repose arising from the relation of a self to all it has to do with. Bad individuality has in it a separation between outward action and a flat repose inwardly.

You don't want to see things as they are because your ego would have to admit that things outside yourself are necessary for the self to be. You still have fun, as most people do, from manipulating things.

Concealment is equated, unknowingly to ourselves, with individuality; the more we conceal the more it seems we are asserting our very personality, resisting a somewhat repellent, unwelcome intrusion of other things into ourselves.

The most important thing in industry is the person who does the industry, which is the worker... Labor is the only source of wealth.

Art can make the old surprising, and the new and sudden soothing.

Art is a way of showing greater fairness to things than is customary.

The resolution of conflict in self is like the making one of opposites in art.

Reality is all that which can affect one.

All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.

The most important thing for you to do is see that in hoping to be affected by other things as fully as possible, you become more yourself.

Is there in painting an effect which arises from the being together of repose and energy in the artist's mind? - can both repose and energy be seen in a painting's line and color, plane and volume, surface and depth, detail and composition? - and is the true effect of a good painting on the spectator one that makes at once for repose and energy, calmness and intensity, serenity and stir?

When truth is divided, errors multiply.

There is a quality of murky grandeur we give ourselves in having our own feelings, recoiling, separate from other things... To feel that we can care for ourselves without seeing our feelings as objects, and liking them as objects, is to be wrong about our care for ourselves.