Clara and Mr. Tiffany Quotes

“You know, bicycling isn't just a matter of balance," I said. "it's a matter of faith. You can keep upright only by moving forward. You have to have your eyes on the goal, not the ground. I'm going to call that the Bicyclist's Philosophy of Life.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“A hard choice. Water or books. Hmm. One could always have wine instead.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“Things that have been lost and then found are doubly precious, don't you think. People too.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“He and I had a bridge that no one else traveled that made us artistic lovers, passionate without a touch of the flesh. He made me thrive, and valuing that, I could do nothing that would endanger it.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“What the world calls failure, I call learning.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“God taking from us and loving us at the same time by providing comforters was a kind of spiritual equanimity. It seemed a phenomenon of life how a death insinuates us into the debt of those who stand by us in trouble and console us.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“Allowing beauty a place in the soul was a powerful antidote to the stress and strain of mortal life.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“Train yourselves by seeking and acknowledging beauty moment by moment every day of your lives," he told them. "Exercise your eyes. Take pleasure in the grace of shape and the excitement of color.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“No need to worry. Diamonds are made under pressure, and you’re our brilliant Claire.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“A year passes like a revolving wheel, and when the spoke of January comes round again, it finds itself in a different place. And so with pain. It does not leave us where it found us.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“Reproducing nature slavishly is not art.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“His intensity was magnetic, irresistible.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“To feel the coolness of the blue glass, like solid pieces of the sea.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“How easily a parent’s motive could be misconstrued by an injured child.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“A woman can't stay hard when all around her is loveliness.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“I began my talk by explaining how opportunities for women in craft workshops had come about through Mrs. Candace Wheeler’s Society of Decorative Art for Women in New York. “The biggest step forward was to convince women that the work of their hands deserved payment and wasn’t just a pleasant domestic pastime.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“I’m sure you agree that one of the greatest pleasures in life is doing what other people say you cannot do.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“Let’s face it, Mr. Mitchell, you only value our work for its dollarable quality, not its adorable quality. Your soul doesn’t have that capacity.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“Someday, when women are considered equal to men, it will become known that a woman of great importance created those lamps. This isn’t the Middle Ages, Clara. You will not be lost to history like the makers of those medieval windows in Gloucester are. Someone will find you.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“...exhibiting everything under his own name is wrong... Granted, [products] all are [collaborative], even across departments. The metalworkers, I mean. He can’t name all those who did some work on dragonfly, but everything we produce has a designer, and it’s not always Tiffany. That lamp was my concept from the beginning through every stage. If he didn’t want to name his designers publicly, then he should have used the company name on his pavilion.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“Men of the old school would call her a brazen wench, but I found her to be ambitious and zestful. At least she didn’t lie.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“It’s very satisfying to encourage and train artists from immigrant families so they’ll create from their own experiences. Eventually, the art of Lower East Side immigrants may become more American than that of artists trained in the conservatism at the Met and other art academies.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“He showed me a small brochure titled 'Louis Comfort Tiffany’s Glass Mosaics, 1895,' and told me to look on the second page. There it was in black and white: “Many of the firm’s great mosaic projects have been executed by women.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“What's remarkable, is that most newcomers get out of here in one generation, working day and night to honor the parents who brought them here.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“Shared experience makes the Fourth Ward a tightly knit community...
I've met wonderful, hardworking people who want to give back to the country that took them in. Poverty isn’t something deserved because of lack of character. There’s nobility in the Lower East Side, just in their perseverance...
The immigrants of the Fourth Ward have troubles, almost insurmountable troubles, but they have dreams too, and ambitions and loves and sorrows. Each person may have left parents and grandparents behind, sisters behind. They gave up their languages and their countries, but each one brings with him a story. Some bring a skill, furniture making or saddlery or ironwork or baking.
"Or glassmaking.” Edwin nodded. “Some bring memories of injustice. Some, only hope. They’re going to give us more than they’ll get.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“Then come live at my boardinghouse. It’s full of interesting, creative people. In the evenings we have sing-alongs around the piano, or we read poetry aloud, or plays that are in the theaters, each of us taking parts. We’re a literary society, a theater critics circle, an artists’ group, a philosophical society. I’ve stumbled upon the perfect place to live.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“From gilt to gold, from glass to gems,” said Bernard, piling mashed potatoes and peas on the back of his fork. “Ingenuity bred wealth, and now wealth is breeding art. We could call it the Tiffany Imperative for each son to exceed his father.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“I have never been able to understand how a true lady could accept money from anyone but a father, a husband, an uncle, or a brother.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“Workshop! Then you consider yourself a New Woman, do you?” Mrs. Hackley looked down her nose at her plate. “It’s my opinion, and that of many social commentators, that when a woman joins the ranks of men in workshops, her morals sink, so mind your step.”

“She’s employed in the arts, Mrs. Hackley, not in a carriage factory, and the arts are a moral force.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany

“The trouble with us is that we’ve been too polite with each other.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany