163 Quotes by Irving Stone

Very well, Vincent," said Zola with a smile, "you have been nominated for the cult of ugliness. Do you accept the nomination?" "Alas," said Vincent, "I'm afraid I was born into it.

He was a victim of his own integrity, which forced him to do his best, even when he would have preferred to do nothing at all.

There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books.

He believed that every individual was responsible for his conduct on earth, that there was a judge within. Could even a blazingly Christ inflict greater retribution? Could Dante's Charon in his rowboat on the river Acheron whip the miscreants into a deeper, more everlasting hell than man's unvarnished verdict of himself?

He had never believed that spirituality had to be anemic or aesthetic.

The desire to succeed had left Vincent. He worked because he had to, because it kept him from suffering too much mentally, because it distracted his mind. He could do without a wife, a home, and children; he could do without love and friendship and health; he could do without security, comfort, and food; he could even do without God. But he could not do without something which was greater than himself, which was his life—the power and ability to create.

I was thinking that Rembrandt would have like to paint you.

The most important thing to do is to make the judge want to decide things your way," Darrow advised one of his younger partners. "They are human beings, moved by the same things that move other human beings. The point of law merely give the judge a reason for doing what you have already made him want to do.

Cruelty is a child of ignorance, and someday men will stop judging and condemning each other. I am really more interested in this than anything else; I wish I could make the world kinder and more humane than it is.