The Unknown Masterpiece Quotes

“Young man,' Porbus said, seeing Poussin stare open-mouthed at a picture, 'Don't look at the canvas too long, it will drive you to despair.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu

“A line is a method of expressing the effect of light upon an object; but there are no lines in Nature, everything is solid. We draw by modeling, that is to say, that we disengage an object from its setting; the distribution of the light alone gives to a body the appearance by which we know it.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece

“[Raphael's] great superiority is due to the instinctive sense which, in him, seems to desire to shatter form. Form is, in his figures, what it is in ourselves, an interpreter for the communication of ideas and sensations, an exhaustless source of poetic inspiration. Every figure is a world in itself, a portrait of which the original appeared in a sublime vision, in a flood of light, pointed to by an inward voice, laid bare by a divine finger which showed what the sources of expression had been in the whole past life of the subject.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece

“You have wavered uncertainly between two systems, between drawing and coloring, between the painstaking phlegm, the stiff precision, of the old German masters, and the dazzling ardor, the happy fertility, of the Italian painters.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece

“Ah! love is a mystery; it can only live hidden in the depths of the heart. You say, even to your friend, ‘Behold her whom I love,’ and there is an end of love.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece

“But, after all, too much knowledge, like ignorance, brings you to a negation.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece

“However," he continued, "this canvas is preferable to the paintings of that varlet Rubens, with his mountains of Flemish flesh sprinkled with vermilion, his waves of red hair and his medley of colors.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece

“Self-distrust vanishes as triumph succeeds to triumph, and modesty is, perhaps, distrust of itself.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece

“if reason and poesy persist in wrangling with the tools, the brushes, we shall be brought to doubt, like Frenhofer, who is as much excited in brain as he is exalted in art. A sublime painter, indeed; but he had the misfortune to be born rich, and that enables him to stray into theory and conjecture. Do not imitate him. Work! work! painters should theorize with their brushes in their hands.”
― Honore de Balzac, Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu

“Les fruits de l'amour passent vite, ceux de l'art sont immortels.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu

“Kendi kendine şişinen, geleceğe biraz erken inanmış bir-iki yaygaracıyı da yalnız aptallar adam yerine koyar.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece

“For all human sentiments there is a time of early blossoming, a day of generous enthusiasm that gradually fades until nothing is left of happiness but a memory, and glory is known for a delusion.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece

“Existe en todos los sentimientos humanos una flor primitiva, engendrada por un noble entusiasmo, que va marchitándose poco a poco hasta que la felicidad no es ya sino un recuerdo, y la gloria una mentira.”
― Honoré de Balzac, LA OBRA MAESTRA DESCONOCIDA [Próxima aparición]

“[...]O que está faltando? Um nada, mas um nada que é tudo. Vocês têm a aparência da vida mas não expressam o seu excesso transbordante, esse não sei o quê que talvez seja a alma e que flutua enevoadamente sobre o invólucro[...]”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece