Quotes

“And strange it is / That nature must compel us to lament / Our most persisted deeds.”
- William Shakespeare
“Butterflies are self propelled flowers.”
- R.H. Heinlein
“Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued is just beyond your grasp, but if you will sit down quietly, may light upon you.”
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
“In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little, human detail can become a Leitmotiv.”
- Henri Cartier-Bresson
“It's the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.”
- John Wooden
“Trees were so rare in that country, and they had to make such a hard fight to grow, that we used to feel anxious about them, and visit them as if they were persons. It must have been the scarcity of detail in that tawny landscape that made detail so precious.”
- Willa Sibert Cather
“A man's accomplishments in life are the cumulative effect of his attention to detail.”
- John Foster Dulles
“Caress the detail , the divine detail.”
- Vladimir Nabokov
“Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees.”
- Paul Strand
“Photography , alone of the arts, seems perfected to serve the desire humans have for a moment - this very moment - to stay.”
- Sam Abell
“Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art.”
- Ansel Adams
“Photography , as we all know, is not real at all. It is an illusion of reality with which we create our own private world.”
- Arnold Newman
“I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term -- meaning that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching -- there would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster.”
- Ansel Adams
“Light makes photography . Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography .”
- George Eastman
“Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche
“There are always flowers for those who want to see them.”
- Henri Matisse
“Out of this nettle - danger - we pluck this flower - safety.”
- William Shakespeare
“the earth laughs in flowers”
- e. e. cummings
“See how nature - trees, flowers, grass - grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence...we need silence to be able to touch souls.”
- Mother Teresa of Calcutta
“Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men and animals. Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; others again are plain, honest and upright, like the broad-faced sunflower and the hollyhock.”
- Henry Ward Beecher
“Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”
- Franz Kafka
“Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.”
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
“Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.”
- Walt Whitman
“Available light is any damn light that is available!”
- W. Eugene Smith
“Avoid making a commotion, just as you wouldn't stir up the water before fishing. Don't use a flash out of respect for the natural lighting.”
- Henri Cartier-Bresson
“Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter.”
- Ansel Adams
“You don't take a photograph, you make it.”
- Ansel Adams
“There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.”
- Ansel Adams
“To photograph is to hold one's breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It's at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.”
- Henri Cartier-Bresson
“Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.”
- Henri Cartier-Bresson
“To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.”
- Paul Valery
“To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the Palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.”
- William Blake
“To be a photographer, one must photograph. No amount of book learning, no checklist of seminars attended, can substitute for the simple act of making pictures. Experience is the best teacher of all. And for that, there are no guarantees that one will become an artist. Only the journey matters.”
- Harry Callahan
“Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.”
- Dorothea Lange
“There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast . Nothing exists in itself.”
- Herman Melville
“Earth's liquid jewelry, wrought of air.”
- Philip James Bailey