Top 62 Whistler Quotes: Famous Quotes & Sayings About Whistler

#1. But there was escape, too, even in those days, for there was Whistler living in the grey mists with a faded orange moon. The nocturne transformed itself into dreamy rooms with Chopin's music creating a mood that softened the hard core of self.

Mark Tobey

#2. A student of James McNeill Whistler tells the great artist, 'I tend to paint what I see.' Whistler replies, 'Ah! The shock will come when you see what you paint!

James Whistler

#3. The less I behave like Whistler's mother the night before, the more I look like her the morning after.

Tallulah Bankhead

#4. Oscar Wilde: "I wish I had said that." Whistler: "You will, Oscar; you will.

James McNeill Whistler

#5. A search through Whistler's correspondence, now online at the University of Glasgow, paints a portrait of a relationship that at times was volatile, with Sickert swinging from sycophantic to offended and defensive. Whistler's

Patricia Cornwell

#6. I do not approve of museums trying just to get people to come in. Whistler was very, very clear on this.

Vivienne Westwood

#7. Nothing gets on other people's nerves at the office more than a whistler. And the sad part is, these whistlers don't know they're doing it. Someone should, tactfully, tell the whistler how much it disrupts the office environment.

Letitia Baldrige

#8. There I was, an 18-year-old mimic rooming with a blind whistler.

Arthur Hailey

#9. Far out, Bobby wrote back. Next thing I know, you'll be knitting socks with Whistler's Mother.

Tom Robbins

#10. I would say a must-do in Canada would be to go skiing at Whistler in Vancouver. You could take a chair lift for, like, a half hour to the top of this mountain, and you ski down; it takes like so long to get to the bottom. You go past the clouds. It's absolutely incredible.

Sebastian Bach

#11. Naturally, I never told him I thought he was a terrific whistler. I mean you don't just go up to somebody and say, 'You're a terrific whistler.

J.D. Salinger

#12. But, I understand that Black Comb and Whistler are supposed to be great for snowboarding. So I am looking forward to going there someday soon.

Bridget Hall

#13. It took a while for the first 'Blade' to get made, and Marvel decided they liked the Whistler character so much, when Blade guest starred on the 'Spider-Man' cartoon, they put Whistler on the cartoon, and the movie hadn't come out yet.

David S.Goyer

#14. A story is told that Whistler once painted a tiny picture of a spray of roses. The artistry involved in the picture was magnificent. Never before, it seemed, had the art of man been able to execute quite so deftly a reproduction of the art of nature.

Sterling W. Sill

#15. Ford even began to whistle, which was probably his mistake. Nobody likes a whistler,

Douglas Adams

#16. Frederic Leighton to James McNeill Whistler: 'My dear Whistler, you leave your pictures in such a sketchy, unfinished state. Why don't you ever finish them?' James McNeill Whistler to Frederic Leighton: 'My dear Leighton, why do you ever begin yours?

James Whistler

#17. Whistler,' Manet called. 'How's your mother?

Christopher Moore

#18. As for borrowing Mr. Whistler's ideas about art, the only thoroughly original ideas I have heard him express have had reference to his own superiority as a painter over painters greater than himself.

Oscar Wilde

#19. The scullery roof had sprung a leak: she put down a bowl to catch the drips, but the rainwater spread and darkened, to make treasure maps and Whistler nocturnes of the walls and ceiling.

Sarah Waters

#20. Left with an oncoming headache, went home, and that's verified, to his wife and six-month-old baby. He's three weeks into a big, fat raise and promotion. He doesn't fit for me."
"Lucky for Whistler, and likely his mother?"
"What? Why?"
"Weak joke. So back to your corporate trio.

J.D. Robb

#21. Nobody likes a whistler, particularly not the divinity that shapes our ends.

Douglas Adams

#22. Skiing in Whistler was great fun. It's an extreme environment that's very different to my own and I had never skied before, so I had to learn to take on the elements quite bravely. It was nice to try something new.

Hayley Atwell

#23. We look at a painting to know the painter; it's his company we are after, not his skill.

James Whistler

#24. Then rang the war chime, the clang of steel on steel loud over Leavenheath, and there came into my heart again the longing to wipe out the memory of old defeats, and I gripped my axe and shield and waited for my turn to come.

Charles W. Whistler

#25. The rare few, who, early in life have rid themselves of the friendship of the many.

James Whistler

#26. Listen! There was never an artistic period. There was never an art-loving nation.

James Whistler

#27. As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight and the subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of color.

James Whistler

#28. Every single one of them with their eyes open and on him, their mouths, too, halfway screaming, halfway begging. Offering themselves to him, because the call was irresistible despite being recognizable. They were moths who know what the light is, know what it will do to them. And come anyway.

Glen Hirshberg

#29. Nature is usually wrong.

James Whistler

#30. Art is a goddess of dainty thought, reticent of habit, abjuring all obtrusiveness, purposing in no way to better others. She is, withal selfishly occupied with her own perfection only - having no desire to teach.

James Whistler

#31. Over and over again did the Attorney-General cry out aloud, in the agony of his cause, 'What is to become of painting if the critics withhold their lash?

James Whistler

#32. He had shrewd, on the spot judgement about human nature. Good sense with good manners and the practice of contentment made up in his view a large part of wisdom.

Theresa Whistler

#33. A picture is finished when all trace of the means used to bring about the end has disappeared.

James Whistler

#34. I can't tell you if genius is hereditary, because heaven has granted me no offspring.

James Whistler

#35. The vast majority of English folk cannot and will not consider a picture as a picture, apart from any story which it may be supposed to tell.

James Whistler

#36. For art and joy go together, with bold openness, and high head, and ready hand - fearing naught and dreading no exposure.

James Whistler

#37. To say of a picture, as is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labour, is to say that it is incomplete and unfit for view.

James Whistler

#38. It takes a long time for a man to look like his portrait.

James Whistler

#39. Fucking is for bathroom stalls and the back seat of a Toyota

Sage Whistler

#40. An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.

James Whistler

#41. I am not arguing with you - I am telling you.

James Whistler

#42. Mauve is just pink trying to be purple.

James Whistler

#43. An artist's career always begins tomorrow.

James Whistler

#44. The work of a master reeks not of the sweat of the brow - suggests no effort - and is finished from its beginning.

James Whistler

#45. Nature is very rarely right, to such an extent even, that it might almost be said that nature is usually wrong ...

James Whistler

#46. I maintain that two and two would continue to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five.

James Whistler

#47. If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this.

James Whistler

#48. To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano.

James Whistler

#49. Art is limited to the infinite, and beginning there cannot progress.

James Whistler

#50. It is for the artist ... in portrait painting to put on canvas something more than the face the model wears for that one day; to paint the man, in short, as well as his features.

James Whistler

#51. Can't a person be born where they want to be born?

James Whistler

#52. If silicon had been a gas I should have been a major-general.

James Whistler

#53. I always ask at once, 'Do you drink?' and if she says 'No,' I bow politely and say I am sorry but I fear she will not suit. All good cooks drink.

James Whistler

#54. People will forgive anything but beauty and talent. So I am doubly unpardonable.

James Whistler

#55. Industry in art is a necessity - not a virtue - and any evidence of the same, in the production, is a blemish, not a quality; a proof, not of achievement, but of absolutely insufficient work, for work alone will efface the footsteps of work.

James McNeill Whistler