Foreground And Background Quotes & Sayings

To show man the best that is in him; not the most appealing or the most amusing or even the most realistic - but the best, which is rare and common and understood by all of us in all our different ways ... to include all the others - the meanest, the cheapest, the most cowardly - as a background and a foreground for something better ... to dig in the old scum that covers us all and find something that might be a tool for a man who would use it to fashion his self-respect in a world where all those tools are buried or broken or illegal ... and finally to tell it as it is, trying to see it all and especially the best, for to miss that part is to shovel shit on men who were born in quicksand and find no novelty in the heave and smell of doom. — Hunter S. Thompson

As a child, I'd always liked cowboys and Indians stories where there were two layers - gruesome in the foreground but funny in the background. — Anthony Browne

If character is the foreground of fiction, setting is the background, and as in a painting's composition, the foreground may be in harmony or in conflict with the background. — Janet Burroway

The author stipulates that while television lately background noise for a child, it tends to shift to the foreground for the adult. The adult pays enough attention to the media attention is paid to the child. — Gary Chapman

A background can be painted in the same range of values as the foreground by reversing the light effect. In the shadow plane, paint the lights cool and the shadows warm, and in the sunlight plane, paint the lights warm and shadows cool. — Harvey Dunn

There is in my work a very strong religious foreground and background. In the later work some of that tends to diminish, but it's certainly present in the early work. — Chaim Potok

I tend to work on the principle that much humour relies on cognitive dissonance - on the foreground not matching the background, on the protagonist's response to a situation being inappropriate, and so on. — Charles Stross

Those dabs of paint and lines become art when form and flow are created out of lower-level perceptual elements. When they combine harmoniously they give rise to perspective, foreground and background, and ultimately to emotion and other aesthetic attributes. — Daniel Levitin

I've gradually risen from lower-class background to lower-class foreground. — Marvin L. Cohen

I never work with music. I hate background music, always did. I only like music in the foreground, meaning, deliberately listen to it, actually. — David Hockney

When I started making my own records, I had this idea of drowning out the singer and putting the rest in the foreground. It was the background that interested me. — Brian Eno

But this isn't a ghost story: the ghost is in the background, where she has to be. If she was in the foreground she'd be a person. — David Mitchell

One of the important things about religion is that it is a sphere which is partially protected from selection. Religious creativity occurs when people pull out of the whole selectivity issue. Becoming celibate - obviously you couldn't be less selective that that. Yes, selection is always in the background. But it's not always there in the foreground. If you don't understand that, you're missing a lot. — Robert Neelly Bellah

Beowulf's picture was far more elaborate than those of his siblings, and it did need a bit more work coloring in the background, but the gist of it was on full, frightening view. In the sky: a full moon, its eerie glow partially obscured by dark, swirling clouds. In the foreground: the dense, ferny undergrowth of a forest, bordered by a few gnarled tree trunks rising upward. In the center of the page: an old woman, wrapped in a cloak. Her mouth hung open in a leering smile, and her teeth were large and razor sharp, with a prominent set of gleaming white incisors. From the back of her shroudlike garments poked a long, wolfish tail. Cassiopeia and Alexander clapped and barked with admiration, but Penelope's skin went cold. — Maryrose Wood

Everyone is aware of the fact that visual and auditive perspective are identical; the only difference being that they are created and perceived by two physically different organs, the eye and the ear. How often the playing of a great master makes us think of a picture with a deep background and varying planes; the figures in the foreground almost leap out of the frame whereas in the background the mountains and clouds are lost in a blue haze. — Heinrich Neuhaus

Any active sportsman has to be very focused; you've got to be in the right frame of mind. If your energy is diverted in various directions, you do not achieve the results. I need to know when to switch on and switch off: and the rest of the things happen around that. Cricket is in the foreground, the rest is in the background. — Sachin Tendulkar

See if you can catch, that is to say, notice, the voice in the head, perhaps in the very moment it complains about something, and recognize it for what it is: the voice of the ego, no more than a conditioned mind-pattern, a thought. Whenever you notice that voice, you will also realize that you are not the voice, but the one who is aware of it. In fact, you are the awareness that is aware of the voice. In the background, there is the awareness. In the foreground, there is the voice, the thinker. In this way you are becoming free of the ego, free of the unobserved mind. The moment you become aware of the ego in you, it is strictly speaking no longer the ego, but just an old, conditioned mind-pattern. Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and ego cannot coexist. The old mind-pattern or mental habit may still survive and reoccur for a while because it has the momentum of thousands of years of collective human unconsciousness behind it, but every time it is recognized, it is weakened. — Eckhart Tolle

Moving ourselves to the background and others to the foreground is evidence that the (spiritual) search is achieving its purpose. — Arianna Huffington

Ideas' can be only in the distant background of a work of art, something like a very low horizon. In the middle distance and foreground ... there shouldn't be any 'ideas' visible. — Mu Xin

Contextualization lies in bringing out the right messages from the abundant content; in sandwiching the subject between the background of information and the foreground of its utility. — Suyog Ketkar

If there's no background, no foreground, no opposition, no complements, then there's no change becasue there's no subject and object. — Frederick Lenz

What's genius about 'Gravity' is that you are close upon the actors, but 3D works best when you have foreground, middle ground and background. — Gavin Hood

I have formed a very clear conception of patriotism. I have generally found it thrust into the foreground by some fellow who has something to hide in the background. I have seen a great deal of patriotism; and I have generally found it the last refuge of the scoundrel. — G.K. Chesterton

There is no foreground or background, only a continuity of interlacing relationships — Lyonel Feininger

I gravitate toward the larger worldview questions such as, Why are we here? What are we supposed to be doing? What does it mean to know another person? To love someone? Of course, those questions are sort of in the background as I'm playing with language in the foreground, but those are the informing questions. — Aaron Belz

In England especially, poetry's woven into the background fabric of society. And in Ireland, it's in the foreground. The place of the poet in Irish society is enormous. If you say you're a poet in Ireland, you'd better know what you're doing, because the standard and the expectations are incredibly high. — David Whyte

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us. — Henry David Thoreau

Originally, it was believed that witches possessed the power of glamour and according to the authors of the Malleus Maleficarum, witches by their glamour could cause the male 'member' to disappear. In modern usage, this meaning has almost disappeared into the background and the power of the term is masked and suffocated by such foreground images as those associated with glamour magazine. — Mary Daly

I'm not a photographer, so I didn't get into F-stops or ND filters or background, foreground, cross-light, all that stuff. But I was interested in the camera and the lenses. That's the world that I'm moving in, in terms of acting and giving a performance. — Keanu Reeves

The American landscape has no foreground and the American mind no background. — Edith Wharton

A castle sat in the background, turrets flying a minuscule emblem in the foreground sat a lady, her skirts adorned with picked blossoms "A castle," Helena murmured, "fit for a princess, except that the prince has escaped. — Karen Ranney

Every policy is shaped by two forces: background analysis and foreground politics. The political forces are loud, self-serving and, in the case of energy policy, well known. — Donella Meadows

Teaching involves a search for meaning in the world. Teaching is a life project, a calling, a vocation that is an organizing center of all other activities. Teaching is past and future as well as present, it is background as well as foreground, it is depth as well as surface. Teaching is pain and humor, joy and anger, dreariness and epiphany. Teaching is world building, it is architecture and design, it is purpose and moral enterprise. Teaching is a way of being in the world that breaks through the boundaries of the traditional job and in the process redefines all life and teaching itself. (p. 130) — Nancy Fichtman Dana

Otherwise he stayed in the background, a small figure in a painting, while life was played out in the foreground. However, — Nina George