Art Of Stillness Quotes & Sayings

Music and dance. What I have written must surely suggest a people cursed by Heaven,... No people on earth, I am persuaded, loves music so well, nor dance, nor oratory, though the music falls strangely on my ears... More than once I have been at Mr. Treacy's when at close of dinner, some traveling harper would be called in, blind as often as not, his fingernails kept long and the mysteries of his art hidden in their horny ridges. The music would come to us with the sadness of a lost world, each note a messenger sent wandering among the Waterford goblets. Riding home late at night, past tavern or alehouse, I would hear harps and violins, thudding feet rising to a frenzy. I have seen them dancing at evening on fairdays, in meadows decreed by custom for such purposes, their bodies swift-moving, and their faces impassive but bright-eyed, intent. I have watched them in silence, reins held loosely in my hand, and have marveled at the stillness of my own body, my shoulders rigid and heavy. — Thomas Flanagan

Archery, fencing, spear fighting, all of the martial arts, tea ceremony, flower arranging ... in all of these, correct breathing, correct balance, and correct stillness help to remake the individual. The basic aim is always the same: by tirelessly practicing a given skill, the student finally sheds the ego with its fears, worldly ambitions, and reliance on objective scrutiny - sheds it so completely that he becomes the instrument of a deeper power, from which mastery falls instinctively, without further effort on his part, like a ripe fruit. — Karlfried Graf Durckheim

In the rare moments I permitted any stillness, I noted a small fluttering at the pit of my belly, a barely perceptible disturbance. The faint whisper of a word would sound in my head: writing. At first I could not say whether it was heartburn or inspiration. The more I listened, the louder the message became: I needed to write, to express myself through written language not only so that others might hear me but so that I could hear myself. The gods, we are taught, created humankind in their own image. Everyone has an urge to create. Its expression may flow through many channels: through writing, art, or music or through the inventiveness of work or in any number of ways unique to all of us, whether it be cooking, gardening, or the art of social discourse. The point is to honor the urge. To do so is healing for ourselves and for others; not to do so deadens our bodies and our spirits. When I did not write, I suffocated in silence. — Gabor Mate

Music is the noise that surrounds the stillness of the art form. — Russell Simmons

The only way to teach focus is to present the eye with opportunities for steady perception - best supplied by the contemplation of art. Looking at art requires stillness and receptivity, which realign our senses and produce a magical tranquillity. — Camille Paglia

I create beautiful art, so I can look back on the life my body fell short of in such a way that it brings me peace. — Nikki Rowe

If a work of architecture consists of forms and contents that combine to create a strong fundamental mood powerful enough to affect us, it may possess the qualities of a work of art. This art has, however, nothing to do with interesting configurations or originality. It is concerned with insights and understanding, and above all truth. Perhaps poetry is unexpected truth. It lives in stillness. Architecture's artistic task is to give this still expectancy a form. The building itself is never poetic. At most, it may possess subtle qualities, which, at certain moments, permit us to understand something that we were never able to understand in quite this way before. — Peter Zumthor

Writers, of course, are obliged by our professions to spend much of our time going nowhere. Our creations come not when we're out in the world, gathering impressions, but when we're sitting still, turning those impressions into sentences. Our job, you could say, is to turn, through stillness, a life of movement into art. Sitting still is our workplace, sometimes our battlefield. — Pico Iyer

There is a love for the real, an affection for the true, in all of Dutch art. A church interior with its stillness. A hand with its gesture. A landscape with its distances. A cloud with its motion. — Katharine Weber

A work of art comes out of a state of deep stillness. — Eckhart Tolle

To meditate, you need to feel, and feeling is a lost art. You need to feel the stillness of existence and also the sound of existence. You need to feel that which lies beyond your awareness field, and that which is within it. — Frederick Lenz

I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction. — Saul Bellow

Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit, and the only means of making concrete the purpose of its varied quickness and stillness. — Mark Rothko

Melissa popped open the clattery little Rotring tin. Pencils, putty rubber, scalpel. She sharpened a 3B, letting the curly shavings fall into the wicker bin, then paused for a few seconds, finding a little place of stillness before starting to draw the flowers. Art didn't count at school because it didn't get you into law or banking or medicine. It was just a fluffy thing stuck to the side of Design and Technology, a free A level for kids who could do it, like a second language, but she loved charcoal and really good gouache, she loved rolling sticky black ink on to a lino plate and heaving on the big black arm of the Cope press, the quiet and those big white walls. — Mark Haddon

What is true stillness? Stillness in movement. — Bruce Lee

Walk in nature. Take the time to be still. Practicing arts, arranging flowers, doing some drawing, working on a computer, brings a sense of stillness into your life. — Frederick Lenz

In the stillness I find my heart growing hot while I seek the person I have already found. God is so much more than I know. — Eric Samuel Timm

My art teacher had said that if you breathed deeply and imagined something, you could be there. You could see it, feel it. During our standoffs with the NKVD, I learned to do that. I clung to my rusted dreams during the times of silence. It was at gunpoint that I fell into every hope and allowed myself to wish from the deepest part of my heart. Komorov thought he was torturing us. But we were escaping into a stillness within ourselves. We found strength there. — Ruta Sepetys

Cultivating an intimate relationship with your inner life is the greatest gift you can give yourself and everyone else on the planet. Within you all the power and substance of life resides. In the stillness at the center of your being is the fountain of pure genius, the source of every masterpiece, the answer to every question, the solution to every problem, and the fulfillment of every dream. But you must daily practice the art of making inner contact in order to actualize this truth. — Derek Rydall