A Quote by Phyllis Bentley

In every art the desire to practice it precedes both the full ability to do so and the possession of something worthwhile to express by its means. — © Phyllis Bentley
In every art the desire to practice it precedes both the full ability to do so and the possession of something worthwhile to express by its means.
You are in the same manner surrounded with a small circle of persons... full of desire. They demand of you the benefits of desire... You are therefore properly the king of desire. ...equal in this to the greatest kings of the earth... It is desire that constitutes their power; that is, the possession of things that men covet.
Every man judges his own happiness and satisfaction with life in terms of his possession or lack of possession of those things that he considers worthwhile and valuable.
The man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled.
Reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought. . . . life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded possession of silence.
Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.
When I was at art school, a lot of art education is about art being a means of self-expression, and as an 18-year-old I didn't know if I had a huge amount I wanted to express. It was a big moment when I decided I wanted to shift the emphasis or the intention of my art from something I disgorged myself upon and something that actually fed me or made me see the world or understand the world.
In one sense it is evident that the art of kingship does include the art of lawmaking. But the political ideal is not full authority for laws but rather full authority for a man who understands the art of kingship and has kingly ability.
When a child shuts down his painful emotional side, he also loses the ability to express his joyous side. Emotions are a whole. With anger comes the ability to express delight; with sadness comes the ability to express lightheartedness. This is the breadth of emotion that allows an adult to experience intimacy with a spouse, with God, and with his children
I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. In each, it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes, in some area, an athlete of God. Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.
I think one of the things that I took from Mel [Bochner] specifically was his ability to look at oneself and one's relationship to the history of art and the practice of art at arm's length, the ability to sort of clinically and coldly remove oneself from the picture and to see it simply as a set of rules, habits, systems, moving parts.
Fine art, that exists for itself alone, is art in a final state of impotence. If nobody, including the artist, acknowledges art as a means of knowing the world, then art is relegated to a kind of rumpus room of the mind and the irresponsibility of the artist and the irrelevance of art to actual living becomes part and parcel of the practice of art.
What I'm most fascinated by is the ability of art to induce changes, but remain grounded solidly in its art practice.
You can cultivate taste, as you can the intellect. Full understanding whets the appetite and desire, and, later, sharpens the enjoyment of possession.
And that desire-the strong desire to take pictures-is important. It borders on a need, based on a habit: the habit of seeing. Whether working or not, photographers are looking, seeing, and thinking about what they see, a habit that is both a pleasure and a problem, for we seldom capture in a single photograph the full expression of what we see and feel. It is the hope that we might express ourselves fully-and the evidence that other photographers have done so-that keep us taking pictures.
The only way to eliminate any government choice on what art is worthwhile, what art isn't worthwhile, is to get the government totally out of the business of funding.
Film is an incredible way to express yourself and your vision, as is fashion, but you have to make sure [to] be confident and honest and true to yourself and say something that means something, because that is really the point of any art.
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