The Delacroix Series Quotes

He barely heard the gasp escape her lips, but he did see her brilliant brown eyes, how they danced with alarm at his presence, how her lips trembled slightly with what she had done, yes, and now for the glare in his eyes. He knew she could see the hunger they held, he knew she could see, in that moment, just who he truly was...what he was. Yes, Christian knew she could see all these things, knew she could do nothing but bask in the monster that he was.
Which was why he was not surprised when she stepped toward him, her shaking lips moving, allowing the low sound of her voice, her sweet, drawing voice, to enter his terribly haunted ears, the ears that caught every breath, heard every pulse of scared heart:
"My Lord...your eyes...."
"Yes," he barely whispered, the word hardly escaping his throat. The hunger was all he could feel, her blood all he could smell, the pulse of lust just there beneath her skin, calling him, drawing him ever closer.... And yes, he felt the skin of her neck, felt the blood just there, her blood...his food. ~ S.C. Parris

You increase your self-respect when you feel you've done everything you ought to have done, and if there is nothing else to enjoy, there remains that chief of pleasures, the feeling of being pleased with oneself. A man gets an immense amount of satisfaction from the knowledge of having done good work and of having made the best use of his day, and when I am in this state I find that I thoroughly enjoy my rest and even the mildest forms of recreation. ~ Eugene Delacroix

The more an object is polished or brilliant, the less you see its own color and the more it becomes a mirror reflecting the color of its surroundings. ~ Eugene Delacroix

They say that each generation inherits from those that have gone before; if this were so there would be no limit to man's improvements or to his power of reaching perfection. But he is very far from receiving intact that storehouse of knowledge which the centuries have piled up before him; he may perfect some inventions, but in others, he lags behind the originators, and a great many inventions have been lost entirely. What he gains on the one hand, he loses on the other. ~ Eugene Delacroix

The artist is always concerned with a total view of the world. However, when the photographer takes a picture ... the edge of his picture is just as interesting as the middle, one can only guess at the existence of a whole, and the view presented seems chosen by chance. ~ Eugene Delacroix

I do not know…who turned me, your Grace."
His downcast gaze said it all: How terribly sad.
For she had known all her life as a Vampire it was most…disgraceful to never know the one who turned you; that was where a Vampire could find a sense of great peace amidst the life that was the constant need for blood. She had only passed by these remarks, this cloud on her person for being 'Princess of the Vampires,' Dracula's special child… ~ S.C. Parris

In a few generations you can breed a racehorse. The recipe for making a man like Delacroix is less well known. ~ Pierre-Auguste Renoir

That is the first time I enjoy the privilege of having the upper hand with Professor Delacroix. And though I do not yet know it, it will also be the last. ~ Nenia Campbell

The secret of not having worries, for me at least, is to have ideas. ~ Eugene Delacroix

Always, at the back of your soul, there is something that says to you, 'Mortal, drawn from eternal life for a short time, think how precious these moments are. ~ Eugene Delacroix

Perfect beauty implies perfect simplicity, a quality that at first sight does not arouse the emotions which we feel before gigantic works, objects whose very disproportion constitutes an element of beauty. ~ Eugene Delacroix

What is real for me are the illusions I create with my paintings. Everything else is quicksand. ~ Eugene Delacroix

Even when we look at nature, our imagination constructs the picture. ~ Eugene Delacroix

What drives men of genius is their obsession with the idea that what has already been done is not good enough. ~ Eugene Delacroix

There is no merit in being truthful when one is truthful by nature, or rather when one can be nothing else; it is a gift, like poetry or music. But it needs courage to be truthful after carefully considering the matter, unless a kind of pride is involved; for example, the man who says to himself, "I am ugly," and then says, "I am ugly" to his friends, lest they should think themselves the first to make the discovery. ~ Eugene Delacroix

Mediocre people have an answer for everything and are astonished at nothing. They always want to have the air of knowing better than you what you are going to tell them; when, in their turn, they begin to speak, they repeat to you with the greatest confidence, as if dealing with their own property, the things that they have heard you say yourself at some other place. A capable and superior look is the natural accompaniment of this type of character. ~ Eugene Delacroix

All painting worth its name, unless one is talking about black and white, must include the idea of color as one of its necessary supports, in the same way that it includes chiaroscuro, proportion, and perspective. ~ Eugene Delacroix

Remember the enemy of all painting is gray: a painting will almost always appear grayer than it is, on account of its oblique position under the light. ~ Eugene Delacroix

Everyone who was in the Delacroix house on Christmas morning got a stocking. That was one of the rules. ~ Eileen Wilks

And since when does Hell have royalty? I thought they were all bureaucrats." "Oh, sweetie," he says, patronizing. "That's cute." "What's cute?" "That you think celebrity children of powerful people aren't royalty." "Are you accusing me of being a Hilton?" I sputter. "Or a, a–" my head might explode, "Kardashian?" "The Hellish equivalent. ~ Eliza Crewe

The principle of painting is also to make a choice. "Even genius," writes Delacroix, ruminating on his art,
"is only the gift of generalizing and choosing." The painter isolates his subject, which is the first way of
unifying it. Landscapes flee, vanish from the memory, or destroy one another. That is why the landscape
painter or the painter of still life isolates in space and time things that normally change with the light, get
lost in an infinite perspective, or disappear under the impact of other values. The first thing that a
landscape painter does is to square off his canvas. He eliminates as much as he includes. ~ Albert Camus

The only skill that cannot be perfected is perfection itself. ~ Daphne Delacroix

Take hold of objects by their centres, not by their lines of contour ... The contour accentuated uniformly and beyond proportion, destroys plasticity, bringing forward those parts of an object which are always most distant from the eye - namely its outlines. ~ Eugene Delacroix

This became Delacroix 's theme: that the achievements of the spirit all that a great library contained were the result of a state of society so delicately balanced that at the least touch they would be crushed beneath an avalanche of pent-up animal forces. ~ Kenneth Clark

Everyone knows that yellow, orange, and red suggest ideas of joy and plenty. I can paint you the skin of Venus with mud, provided you let me surround it as I will. ~ Eugene Delacroix

I go to work as others rush to see their mistresses, and when I leave, I take back with me to my solitude, or in the midst of the distractions that I pursue, a charming memory that does not in the least resemble the troubled pleasure of lovers. ~ Eugene Delacroix

Weaknesses in men of genius are usually an exaggeration of their personal feeling; in the hands of feeble imitators they become the most flagrant blunders. Entire schools have been founded on misinterpretations of certain aspects of the masters. Lamentable mistakes have resulted from the thoughtless enthusiasm with which men have sought inspiration from the worst qualities of remarkable artists because they are unable to reproduce the sublime elements in their work. ~ Eugene Delacroix

If Delacroix discovered painting when he had neither teeth nor health, I can discover it when I have neither teeth nor the mind.
[Vincent Van Gogh] ~ Irving Stone

God is that inner presence which makes us admire the beautiful and consoles us for not sharing the happiness of the wicked. ~ Eugene Delacroix

I live in company with a body, a silent companion, exacting and eternal. He it is who notes that individuality which is the seal of the weakness of our race. My soul has wings, but the brutal jailer is strict. ~ Eugene Delacroix

Everything is a subject; the subject is yourself. It is within yourself that you must look and not around you ... The greatest happiness is to reveal it to others, to study oneself, to paint oneself continually in [one's] work. ~ Eugene Delacroix

The true wisdom of the philosopher ought to insist in enjoying everything. Yet we apply ourselves to dissecting and destroying everything that is good in itself, that has virtue, albeit the virtue there is in mere illusions. Nature gives us this life like a toy to a weak child. We want to see how it all works; we break everything. There remains in our hands, and before our eyes, stupid and opened too late, the sterile wreckage, fragments that will not again make a whole. The good is so simple. ~ Eugene Delacroix

Every time I await a model, even when I am most pressed to time, I am overjoyed when the time comes and I tremble when I hear the key turn in the door. ~ Eugene Delacroix

Curiously enough, the Sublime is generally achieved through want of proportion. ~ Eugene Delacroix

The so-called conscientiousness of the majority of painters is only perfection applied to the art of boring. ~ Eugene Delacroix

If you are not skillful enough to sketch a man jumping out of a window in the time it takes him to fall from the fourth storey to the ground, you will never be able to produce great works. ~ Eugene Delacroix

The only ones who can really benefit by consulting the model are those who can produce their effect without a model. ~ Eugene Delacroix

We should not allow ourselves to believe that writers like Poe have more imagination than those who are content with describing things as they really are. It is surely easier to invent striking situations in this way than to tread the beaten track which intelligent minds have followed throughout the centuries. ~ Eugene Delacroix

I am carrying out my plan, so long formulated, of keeping a journal. What I most keenly wish is not to forget that I am writing for myself alone. Thus I shall always tell the truth, I hope, and thus I shall improve myself. These pages will reproach me for my changes of mind. ~ Eugene Delacroix

Delacroix , Wagner , Baudelaire all great theorists, bent on dominating other minds by sensuous means. Their one dream was to create the irresistible effect to intoxicate, or overwhelm. They looked to analysis to provide them with the keyboard on which to play, with certainty, on man's emotions, and they sought in abstract meditation they key to sure and certain action upon their subject man's nervous and psychic being. ~ Charles Baudelaire

It is only possible to speak in the language and in the spirit of one's time. ~ Eugene Delacroix

Alexandria," he began, the name lingering on the morning air as though it did not belong amongst trees, but instead somewhere much safer, much more enclosed.
"Christian," she breathed after her name had remained uncomfortably within his ears for a most distressing period of time.
The tears in her eyes had begun to fill quickly and more tears fell as she stared upon him expectantly, and he was quite suddenly aware that a drink of blood would be most desirable to ease the sheer uncomfortable edge he felt with her stare. ~ S.C. Parris