QUOTES TO CUT AND PRINT BY

THE QUEST: I will make 1,000 woodcut prints (Lord willin' and the creeks don't rise).
These are the quotes that inspire me and keep me going.

THE QUOTES

"Heart, humor and humility lighten up a heavy load." -- Joni Mitchell

"Most people miss opportunity because it is dressed in coveralls and
looks like work -- Thomas Edison

"The artist... tells his audience, at the risk of their displeasure, the secrets of their own hearts."
R. G. Collingwood

"A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd."
James Crook

"Make voyages. Attempt them. There is nothing else."
--Tennessee Williams

"You lose it if you talk about it"
--Ernest Hemingway

"Following the sun, we left the old world"
--Inscription on one of Columbus' caravels

"Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win."
--William Shakespeare

 "What a fine mess you've got us in now Ollie."
--Stan Laurel

"Yesterday is ashes; tomorrow wood. Only today does the fire burn brightly."
--Eskimo proverb

"The lyfe so short; the craft so long to lerne."
Chaucer  _Parlement of Foules_ 1386

"If the wind will not serve, take to the oars."
--Latin proverb

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."
--Abraham Lincoln

"As if you could kill time without injuring eternity."
--Henry David Thoreau

"Other people's eggs have two yolks."
--Hungarian proverb

"Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something."
--Thomas A. Edison

"Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors."
--African proverb

"To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road,
to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Pray not for lighter burdens but for stronger backs."
--Theodore Roosevelt

"No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn."
--Hal Borland

"There is no wind that always blows a storm."
--Euripides

"Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat."
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Practice being excited."
--Bill Foster

"I'll play it first and tell you what it is later."
--Miles Davis

"When words leave off, art begins."
--Heinrich Heine

Another thing--it [being an artist] requires a shot of desire and
passion.  You have to want to do it.  Do not allow yourself to
become suspicious, fearful or jaded--be open to both the burden
and the joy.  "I want to cultivate the seed that was placed in
me until the last small twig has grown." -- Kathe Kollwitz
[quoted from Robert Genn's Newsletter]

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the
things you didn't do than by the things you did.  So throw off
the bowlines.  Sail away from the safe harbor.  Explore. Dream."
-Mark Twain

"Who waits until the wind shall silent keep
Will never find the ready hour to sow."
--Helen Hunt Jackson

"Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be."
--Clementine Paddleford

"I demolish my bridges behind me... then there is no choice but forward."
--Firdtjorf Nansen

"The distance doesn't matter, only the first step is difficult."
--Madame Marquise du Deffand

"More powerful than the will to win is the courage to begin."
--Anon.

"See the clock tick and
hum and realize that time is gold and wisdom has always
respected it.  Measure time by signature accomplishments.  Have
no venue in mind but gradually fill your own space. Alternate
days--inside, outside, or other stimuli--in order to
cross-pollinate and speed up the metabolism of ideas and motifs.
Walk the tightrope of originality and influence and kite your
own spirits. Act as if your greatness always was there, and it
will be.  Sweat a lot.  Make a lot of stuff.  Quickly get rid of
stuff that is sub-standard.  Always ask, "What could be?"
Believe in miracles."
--Robert Genn

 "Each is given a bag of tools,
A shapeless mass and a book of rules;
And each must make, ere life is flown,
A stumbling block or a stepping stone."
-R L Sharpe

"I have often been adrift, but I have always stayed afloat."
--David Berry

"He turns not back who is bound to a star."
--Leonardo Da Vinci

"The stones that Critics hurl with Harsh Intent
A Man may use to build a Monument."
--Arthur Guiterman

"The time is always right to do what is right."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after
others have let go."
--William Feather

"One should count each day a separate life."
--Seneca

"The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of
tension waiting to be struck."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"There is no substitute for hard work."
--Thomas Edison

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."
--Helen Keller

"The impossible is often the untried."
--Jim Goodwin

"I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship."
--Louisa May Alcott

"Act - act in the living present!"
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Learn as if you were going to live forever. Live as if you
were going to die tomorrow."
--Ghandi

"Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith,
and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action,
richer in achievement and experience."
--Eddie Rickenbacker

"Lord of himself, though not of lands,
And having nothing, yet hath all."
--Henry Wotton

"By-and-by never comes."
--St. Augustine

"It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and
occupation, which give happiness."
--Thomas Jefferson

"The door of opportunity won't open unless you do some
pushing."
--Anon.

"Too many of us are hung up on what we don't have, can't
have, or won't ever have.  We spend too much energy being
down, when we could use that same energy - if not less of it
- doing, or at least trying to do, some of the things we
really want to do."
--Terry McMillan

"The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest
navigators."
--Edward Gibbon

"Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time."
-Steven Wright, Comedian

"Facing it - always facing it - that's the way to get through. Face it!"
--Joseph Conrad

"Genius is an infinite capacity for taking life by the scruff of the neck."
--Katherine Hepburn

This link will take you to an e-mail from a fascinating man, Robert Genn. His timid and insightful intrusions into my mail box have become a powerful motivator in my life.
Be sure to visit his website.

"Let us, then, be up and doing.
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing.
Learn to labor and to wait."
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Lost time is never found again."
--Benjamin Franklin

"And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily."
--Col. 3:23

"Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks
his neck out."
--James B. Conant

"Those who follow are always behind."
--A. Y. Jackson

"Lord grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish."
--Michelangelo

"Luck is the by-product of busting your fanny."
--Don Sutton

"Never let go of the fiery sadness called: desire"

"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of men of old;
seek what they sought."
--Matsuo Basho

"One of these days is none of these days."
--H. G. Bohn

"The future belongs to those who live intensely in the present."
--Anon.

"When it is dark enough, you can see the stars"
--Charles A. Beard

"Seize the day, and put the least possible trust in tomorrow."
--Horace

"All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward."
--Ellen Glasgow

"God gives every bird its food, but He does not throw it into its nest."
--J.G. Holland

"What else are we gonna live by if not dreams?"
--Jill Robinson

"I have learned this at least by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success
unexpected in common hours."
--Henry David Thoreau

"There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality;
and then there are those who turn one into the other."
 --Douglas Everett

"Only that day dawns to which we are awake."
--Henry David Thoreau

"With every rising of the sun, think of your life as just begun."
--Anon.

"Every new day begins with possibilities."
--Ronald Reagan

"To escape criticism - do nothing, say nothing, be nothing."
--Elbert Hubbard

"Thunder is good, thunder is impressive;
but it is lightning that does the work."
--Mark Twain

"We will either find a way, or make one."
--Hannibal

"You have to take it as it happens, but you should try to
make it happen the way you want to take it."
--German proverb

"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."
--Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"Great things are accomplished by talented people who believe they will accomplish them."
--Warren Bennis

"I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence but it comes from within.
It is there all the time."
--Anna Freud

"Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe
that something inside them was superior to circumstance."
--Bruce Barton

THE MOTHER OF ALL QUOTES!
"But more important than all this is the undeniable fact that working with a woodblock takes on the aspects of a struggle between antagonists. The wood is reluctant, the artist determined, and it is reasonable to suggest that the battle of wills brings about a result quite different from those media in which the hand of the artist moves brush or pencil or crayon freely over the working surface.
With wood, every movement of the tool involves overcoming resistance and demands the use of a certain amount of sheer physical force. Every block and every subject is a new challenge.
The result is an emotional involvement between man and material that, enduring over the years, somehow takes on the character of an addiction, or a love affair, or something similarly irrational. At any rate, there seems to be no known cure."
--Lynd Ward

A huge directory of art quotes from Robert Genn's website: http://www.painterskeys.com/quotations.asp