Whistler Quotes & Sayings

But, I understand that Black Comb and Whistler are supposed to be great for snowboarding. So I am looking forward to going there someday soon. — Bridget Hall

Art is limited to the infinite, and beginning there cannot progress. — James Whistler

I always ask at once, 'Do you drink?' and if she says 'No,' I bow politely and say I am sorry but I fear she will not suit. All good cooks drink. — James Whistler

There is no you in NewVillager, but there is a we. Your job thenceforth will be that of the bodhisattva, the guru, the gap-toothed docent with a serious thing for Whistler's Mother. There will be others, newervillagers than yourself, who never stood a chance either. Only through them do you stand any hope of tracing your footsteps back to where you began. — Daniel Levin Becker

I am not arguing with you - I am telling you. — James Whistler

Left with an oncoming headache, went home, and that's verified, to his wife and six-month-old baby. He's three weeks into a big, fat raise and promotion. He doesn't fit for me."
"Lucky for Whistler, and likely his mother?"
"What? Why?"
"Weak joke. So back to your corporate trio. — J.D. Robb

The scullery roof had sprung a leak: she put down a bowl to catch the drips, but the rainwater spread and darkened, to make treasure maps and Whistler nocturnes of the walls and ceiling. — Sarah Waters

Whistler,' Manet called. 'How's your mother? — Christopher Moore

Over and over again did the Attorney-General cry out aloud, in the agony of his cause, 'What is to become of painting if the critics withhold their lash? — James Whistler

Far out, Bobby wrote back. Next thing I know, you'll be knitting socks with Whistler's Mother. — Tom Robbins

Bottom line is, even if you see 'em coming, you're not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So what are we, helpless? Puppets? No. The big moments are gonna come. You can't help that. It's what you do afterwards that counts. That's when you find out who you are. — Joss Whedon

I can't tell you if genius is hereditary, because heaven has granted me no offspring. — James Whistler

We look at a painting to know the painter; it's his company we are after, not his skill. — James Whistler

People will forgive anything but beauty and talent. So I am doubly unpardonable. — James Whistler

Can't a person be born where they want to be born? — James Whistler

A picture is finished when all trace of the means used to bring about the end has disappeared. — James Whistler

Truly color is vice! Of course, it can be, and has the right to be one of the finest virtues. Controlled by the strong hand and careful guidance of her Master drawing, color is a splendid Mistress, with a mate worthy of herself, her lover, but her Master likewise, the most magnificent Mistress possible, and the result is evident in all the glorious things that spring from their union. — James Whistler

An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision. — James Whistler

Frederic Leighton to James McNeill Whistler: 'My dear Whistler, you leave your pictures in such a sketchy, unfinished state. Why don't you ever finish them?' James McNeill Whistler to Frederic Leighton: 'My dear Leighton, why do you ever begin yours? — James Whistler

It takes a long time for a man to look like his portrait. — James Whistler

An artist's career always begins tomorrow. — James Whistler

The vast majority of English folk cannot and will not consider a picture as a picture, apart from any story which it may be supposed to tell. — James Whistler

Nature is usually wrong. — James Whistler

He had shrewd, on the spot judgement about human nature. Good sense with good manners and the practice of contentment made up in his view a large part of wisdom. — Theresa Whistler

You should not say it is not good. You should say you do not like it; and then, you know, you're perfectly safe. — James Whistler

As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight and the subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of color. — James Whistler

I would say a must-do in Canada would be to go skiing at Whistler in Vancouver. You could take a chair lift for, like, a half hour to the top of this mountain, and you ski down; it takes like so long to get to the bottom. You go past the clouds. It's absolutely incredible. — Sebastian Bach

To say of a picture, as is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labour, is to say that it is incomplete and unfit for view. — James Whistler

If silicon had been a gas I should have been a major-general. — James Whistler

Listen! There was never an artistic period. There was never an art-loving nation. — James Whistler

The explanation is quite simple. I wished to be near my mother. — James Whistler

Paint should not be applied thick. It should be like a breath on the surface of a pane of glass. — James Whistler

Nevertheless, we react to one a bit differently than we do to Rothko's hovering panels or Barnett Newman's stripes, though Whistler does approach their extremity of abstraction; part of our pleasure lies in recognizing bridges and buildings in the mist, and in sensing the damp riverine silence, the glimmering metropolitan presence. ... The painting - a single blurred stripe of urban shore - is additionally daring in that the sky and sea are no shade of blue, but, instead, an improbable, pervasive cobalt green. Human vision is here taken to its limits, and modern painting, as a set of sensations realized in paint, is achieved. — John Updike

There I was, an 18-year-old mimic rooming with a blind whistler. — Arthur Hailey

If other people are going to talk, conversation becomes impossible. — James Whistler

It took a while for the first 'Blade' to get made, and Marvel decided they liked the Whistler character so much, when Blade guest starred on the 'Spider-Man' cartoon, they put Whistler on the cartoon, and the movie hadn't come out yet. — David S.Goyer

Mauve is just pink trying to be purple. — James Whistler

A story is told that Whistler once painted a tiny picture of a spray of roses. The artistry involved in the picture was magnificent. Never before, it seemed, had the art of man been able to execute quite so deftly a reproduction of the art of nature. — Sterling W. Sill

Art happens-no hovel is safe from it, no prince may depend upon it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about. — James Whistler

As light fades and the shadows deepen, all petty and exacting details vanish, everything trivial disappears, and I see things as they are in great strong masses: the buttons are lost, but the sitter remains; the sitter is lost, but the shadow remains; the shadow is lost, but the picture remains. And that, night cannot efface from the painter's imagination. — James Whistler

Nobody likes a whistler, particularly not the divinity that shapes our ends. — Douglas Adams

It is for the artist ... in portrait painting to put on canvas something more than the face the model wears for that one day; to paint the man, in short, as well as his features. — James Whistler

Skiing in Whistler was great fun. It's an extreme environment that's very different to my own and I had never skied before, so I had to learn to take on the elements quite bravely. It was nice to try something new. — Hayley Atwell

The dining-room was in the good taste of the period. It was very severe. There was a high dado of white wood and a green paper on which were etchings by Whistler in neat black frames. The green curtains with their peacock design, hung in straight lines, and the green carpet, in the pattern of which pale rabbits frolicked among leafy trees, suggested the influence of William Morris. There was blue delft on the chimneypiece. At that time there must have been five hundred dining-rooms in London decorated in exactly the same manner. It was chaste, artistic, and dull. — W. Somerset Maugham

The rare few, who, early in life have rid themselves of the friendship of the many. — James Whistler

Then rang the war chime, the clang of steel on steel loud over Leavenheath, and there came into my heart again the longing to wipe out the memory of old defeats, and I gripped my axe and shield and waited for my turn to come. — Charles W. Whistler

The masterpiece should appear as the flower to the painter - perfect in its bud as in its bloom - with no reason to explain its presence - no mission to fulfill - a joy to the artist, a delusion to the philanthropist - a puzzle to the botanist - an accident of sentiment and alliteration to the literary man. — James Whistler

THE WHISTLER
All of a sudden she began to whistle. By all of a sudden
I mean that for more than thirty years she had not
whistled. It was thrilling. At first I wondered, who was
in the house, what stranger? I was upstairs reading, and
she was downstairs. As from the throat of a wild and
cheerful bird, not caught but visiting, the sounds war-
bled and slid and doubled back and larked and soared.
Finally I said, Is that you? Is that you whistling? Yes, she
said. I used to whistle, a long time ago. Now I see I can
still whistle. And cadence after cadence she strolled
through the house, whistling.
I know her so well, I think. I thought. Elbow and an-
kle. Mood and desire. Anguish and frolic. Anger too.
And the devotions. And for all that, do we even begin
to know each other? Who is this I've been living with
for thirty years?
This clear, dark, lovely whistler? — Mary Oliver

As for borrowing Mr. Whistler's ideas about art, the only thoroughly original ideas I have heard him express have had reference to his own superiority as a painter over painters greater than himself. — Oscar Wilde

Nature contains the elements, in colour and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music. But the artists is born to pick, and choose, and group with science, these elements, that the result may be beautiful - as the musician gathers his notes, and forms his chords, until he brings forth from chaos glorious harmony — James Whistler

If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this. — James Whistler

A search through Whistler's correspondence, now online at the University of Glasgow, paints a portrait of a relationship that at times was volatile, with Sickert swinging from sycophantic to offended and defensive. Whistler's — Patricia Cornwell

Fucking is for bathroom stalls and the back seat of a Toyota — Sage Whistler

Nature is very rarely right, to such an extent even, that it might almost be said that nature is usually wrong ... — James Whistler

Naturally, I never told him I thought he was a terrific whistler. I mean you don't just go up to somebody and say, 'You're a terrific whistler. — J.D. Salinger

I do not approve of museums trying just to get people to come in. Whistler was very, very clear on this. — Vivienne Westwood

The work of a master reeks not of the sweat of the brow - suggests no effort - and is finished from its beginning. — James Whistler

Canned reference is practically always loaded with problems. Photos, for example, contrive to kill imagination and stifle the natural development of creative patterns. While "ready-mades" do show up from time to time, they are rare. Art need not be what is seen-but what is to be seen. "Nature," said James McNeill Whistler, "is usually wrong." — Robert Genn

I can't. I w-want y-you, my own fucking twin! — Sage Whistler

For at least twenty minutes she handed out the story. The youngest kids were soothed by her voice, and everyone else saw visions of the whistler running from the scene. Liesel did not. The book thief saw only the mechanics of the words
their bodies stranded on the paper, beaten down for her to walk on. Somewhere, too, in the gaps between a period and the next capital letter, there was also Max. She remembered reading to him when he was sick. It he in the basement? she wondered. Or is he stealing a glimpse of the sky again? — Markus Zusak

Industry in art is a necessity - not a virtue - and any evidence of the same, in the production, is a blemish, not a quality; a proof, not of achievement, but of absolutely insufficient work, for work alone will efface the footsteps of work. — James McNeill Whistler

In Britain, chinoiserie was eclipsed by the medievalism of Sir Walter Scott and the Gothic Revival, while in Europe japonisme would be chinoiserie's successor. Japonisme never compelled the general middle-class British taste as did the indigenous medieval style. Nonetheless, through extensive importations to Britain of Japanese art and artifacts, notably by the shop Liberty's of London, as well as through the artists James McNeill Whistler and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the architect E.W. Godwin, and the writer Oscar Wilde, the Japanese style of decoration was known in Britain well before 1894. — Linda Gertner Zatlin

A student of James McNeill Whistler tells the great artist, 'I tend to paint what I see.' Whistler replies, 'Ah! The shock will come when you see what you paint! — James Whistler

I remember that at one time I always made a drawing before going to bed!! - Of myself I mean - though I finally destroyed most of them. — James Whistler

Nothing gets on other people's nerves at the office more than a whistler. And the sad part is, these whistlers don't know they're doing it. Someone should, tactfully, tell the whistler how much it disrupts the office environment. — Letitia Baldrige

Oscar Wilde: "I wish I had said that." Whistler: "You will, Oscar; you will. — James McNeill Whistler

Art is a goddess of dainty thought, reticent of habit, abjuring all obtrusiveness, purposing in no way to better others. She is, withal selfishly occupied with her own perfection only - having no desire to teach. — James Whistler

Ford even began to whistle, which was probably his mistake. Nobody likes a whistler, — Douglas Adams

Art should be independent of all clap-trap - should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism and the like. All these have no kind of concern with it; and that is why I insist on calling my works 'arrangements' and 'harmonies. — James Whistler

Hang on the walls of your mind the memory of your successes. Take counsel of your strength, not your weakness. Think of the good jobs you have done. Think of the times when you rose above your average level of performance and carried out an idea or a dream or a desire for which you had deeply longed. Hang these pictures on the walls of your mind and look at them as you travel the roadway of life. — James Whistler

The less I behave like Whistler's mother the night before, the more I look like her the morning after. — Tallulah Bankhead

But there was escape, too, even in those days, for there was Whistler living in the grey mists with a faded orange moon. The nocturne transformed itself into dreamy rooms with Chopin's music creating a mood that softened the hard core of self. — Mark Tobey

Every single one of them with their eyes open and on him, their mouths, too, halfway screaming, halfway begging. Offering themselves to him, because the call was irresistible despite being recognizable. They were moths who know what the light is, know what it will do to them. And come anyway. — Glen Hirshberg

To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano. — James Whistler

For art and joy go together, with bold openness, and high head, and ready hand - fearing naught and dreading no exposure. — James Whistler

I maintain that two and two would continue to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five. — James Whistler