Robert Henri Quotes

There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.

We require, as a species, the difference between what is safe and unsafe to define ourselves. Be it in darkness or in light, where we are means nothing without the comparison to the other place - where we are not. And thus it is the difference between them that tells us who and what we are.

truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more.

An increase in light gives an increase in darkness.

When I define polarities in my work, I actually create the space between things. I point to the question I am actually interested in, without naming it.

There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.

The beginnings and ends of shadow lie between the light and darkness and may be infinitely diminished and infinitely increased. Shadow is the means by which bodies display their form. The forms of bodies could not be understood in detail but for shadow.

The planet is always half light and half dark, and so are we.

It is still color, it is not yet light.

Duality is not a story. Duality is just a complexity.

Shadow owes its birth to light.

How are things visible? Can you see an egg against a white background? Not by drawing a line around it can you make it evident.

She had in mind a different kind of looking person, because his appearance is not at all like mine.

It's so easy just to see the one-to-one narrative between presence and non-presence.

Sometimes he could almost forget that it was there, the way you forget about the sky or the earth underfoot, but there were other times when it seemed as if there was nothing else in the world.

We know a thing by its opposite corollary; hot by having experienced cold; good by having decided what is bad; love by hate.

It is better to sit in appreciative contemplation of a world in which beauty is eternally supported on a foundation of ugliness: cut out the support, and beauty will sink from sight.

Good and bad; shade and sunlight, there's but a hair's breath between them. It's all one in the end.

Curve: The loveliest distance between two points.

I am the form and I am the hollow, the thrust and the contour

The light can be a curtain as well as the darkness.

But thou that didst appear so fair To fond imagination, Dost rival in the light of day Her delicate creation.

Without the existence of the opposite, the concept has no meaning.

You cannot experience yourself as what you are until you've encountered what you are not

You tell yourself that noise is what defines silence. Without noise, silence would not be golden. Noise is the exception.