Henri Cartier-Bresson Quotes

It has become progressively clearer that the plastic expression of true reality is attained through dynamic movement in equilibrium. Plastic art affirms that equilibrium can only be established through the balance of unequal but equivalent oppositions.

At the still point, there the dance is.

It is the same with people as it is with riding a bike. Only when moving can one comfortably maintain one's balance.

The stillness in stillness is not the real stillness; only when there is stillness in movement does the universal rhythm manifest.

He made me suddenly realize that photographs could reach eternity through the moment.

Movement is only as good as the sense of stillness that you can bring to it to put it into perspective.

Everything lives by movement, everything is maintained by equilibrium, and harmony results from the analogy of contraries; this law is the form of forms.

There were moments, of course. Those small spaces in time, too soon gone, when everything seems to stand still, and existence is balanced on a perfect point, like the moment of change between the dark and the light, and when both and neither surround you.

Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance

Photography, because it stops the flow of life, is always flirting with death.

He who tip-toes cannot stand; he who strides cannot walk.

The most stable elements, Clarice, appear in the middle of the periodic table, roughly between iron and silver. Between iron and silver. I think that is appropriate for you.

...the still point in a turning world.

Everything we care about lies somewhere in the middle, where pattern and randomness interlace.

All photographers have to do, is find and catch the story-telling moment.

The Photography is a chopper which in the eternity seizes the moment which dazzled it.

The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you're supposed to go up and down when you're supposed to go down. When you're supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you're supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. When there's no flow, stay still. If you resist the flow, everything dries up. If everything dries up, the world is darkness.

Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera.

Life is a balance between rest and movement.

Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.

Everything in life has a place, and when one thing moves, it must go somewhere else.

Newton's work on gravity led to the discovery of the Lagrange point, a place where opposing forces cancel one another out, and a body may remain at relative rest. This is where I am right now; the forces in my life confound one another. Better, for the moment, to be here and now, without history or future.

I've always felt that complement of opposites: body and soul, solitude and companionship, and in the dance studio, contraction and release, rise and fall.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not all it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

A man walking is never in balance, but always correcting for imbalance.