A Quote by Henri Matisse

A work should contain its total meaning within itself and should impress it on the spectator before he even knows the subject. — © Henri Matisse
A work should contain its total meaning within itself and should impress it on the spectator before he even knows the subject.
A work should convey its entire meaning by itself, imposing it on the spectator even before he knows what the subject is.
All art should have a certain mystery and should make demands on the spectator. Giving a sculpture or a drawing too explicit a title takes away part of that mystery so that the spectator moves on to the next object, making no effort to ponder the meaning of what he has just seen. Everyone thinks that he or she looks but they don't really, you know.
The Constitution should contain a provision that every officer of the Government who should neglect or refuse to extend the protection guaranteed in the Constitution should be subject to capital punishment; and then the president of the United States would not say, "Your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you."
I believe that government should confine itself to the public realm and that it should be as stripped down as possible, within reason. It should not be burdened by excess bureaucracy.
The last motive in the world for acquiring vocabulary should be to impress. Words should be acquired because we urgently need them - to convey, to reach, to express something within us, and to understand others.
Further, in writing, I feel corrupt and unethical if I have to look up a subject in a library as part of the writing itself. This acts as a filter--it is the only filter. If the subject is not interesting enough for me to look it up independently, for my own curiosity or purposes, and I have not done so before, then I should not be writing about it at all, period. It does not mean that libraries (physical and virtual) are not acceptable; it means that they should not be the source of any idea.
To refuse any bond of union between man and civil society, on the one hand, and God the Creator and consequently the supreme Law-giver, on the other, is plainly repugnant to the nature, not only of man, but of all created things; for, of necessity, all effects must in some proper way be connected with their cause; and it belongs to the perfection of every nature to contain itself within that sphere and grade which the order of nature has assigned to it, namely, that the lower should be subject and obedient to the higher.
'Always speak the truth - think before you speak - and write it down afterwards.' 'I'm sure I didn't mean - ' Alice was beginning, but the Red Queen interrupted her impatiently. 'That's just what I complain of! You should have meant! What do you suppose is the use of child without any meaning? Even a joke should have some meaning - and a child's more important than a joke, I hope.
Because my work is naturally non-meaningful, the meaning found in it will remain doubtful and inconsistent - which is the way it should be. All that I care about is that, like any startling piece of nature, it should be capable of stimulating meaning.
Within our lifetime, we can remember a time when Islamism wasn't the dominant form of discourse or the aim should be to minimise the absolutists within any religious community and contain them.
A work of art must carry in itself its complete significance and impose it upon the beholder even before he can identify the subject-matter.
Work should be personal. For all of us. Not just for the artist and entrepreneur. Work should have meaning for the accountant, the construction worker, the technologist, the manager and the clerk.
No poem should be an urn to contain a meaning, but a net to catch what meanings float through the day.
To reason logically is so to link one's propositions that each should contain the reason for the one succeeding it, and should itself be demonstrated by the one preceding it. Or at any rate, whatever the order adopted in the construction of one's own exposition, it is to demonstrate judgments by each other.
Theory has nothing to do with a work of art. Pictures which are interpretable, and which contain a meaning, are bad pictures. A picture presents itself as the Unmanageable, the Illogical, the Meaningless. It demonstrates the endless multiplicity of aspects; it takes away our certainty, because it deprives a thing of its meaning and its name. It shows us the thing in all the manifold significance and infinite variety that preclude the emergence of any single meaning and view.
The Bill of Rights should contain the general principles of natural and civil liberty. It should be to a community what the eternal laws and obligations of morality are to the conscience. It should be unalterable by any human power.
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