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The world of architecture – and of works conceived for architecture – tends towards beauty. True beauty tends towards ugliness and panic.

— Bram van Velde Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970)

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Beauty

More quotes by Bram van Velde

Yes, perhaps there is some enjoyment in it [his paintings] too, somewhere.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

Painting is an eye, a blinded eye that continues to see, and sees what blinds it.. ..this tiny little thing, which is nothing, which dominates life.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

Because it's an adventure out of all proportion. You have to devote all your strength to it and it's never enough.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970)

Mondrian? His mind was too subtle. He worked in the light. I work in the darkness.. .Mondrian is the Buddha of painting. I saw him once. You wondered how a man could radiate such charisma.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

When you get to the bottom, you discover that there is no room for pride. That’s what I paint.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

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Beautiful objects are wrought by study through effort, but ugly things are reaped automatically without toil.

Democritus Freeman (1948)

True beauty dwells in deep retreats,
Whose veil is unremoved
Till heart with heart in concord beats,
And the lover is beloved.

William Wordsworth

The great artists are the ones who dare to entitle to beauty things so natural that when they're seen afterward, people say: Why did I never realize before that this too was beautiful?

André Gide The Immoralist (1902)

Beauty itself doth of itself persuade
The eyes of men without an orator.

William Shakespeare The Rape of Lucrece (1594)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Bram van Velde (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.