Herbert Gold Quotes

The bees pillage the flowers here and there but they make honey of them which is all their own; it is no longer thyme or marjolaine: so the pieces borrowed from others he will transform and mix up into a work all his own.

O bees, sweet bees!" I said; "that nearest field Is shining white with fragrant immortelles Fly swiftly there and drain those honey wells.

I can't bear living in this huge beautiful world and not try to imitate it as best I can.

Art owes its origin to Nature herself... this beautiful creation, the world, supplied the first model, while the original teacher was that divine intelligence which has not only made us superior to the other animals, but like God Himself, if I may venture to say it.

Art is the right hand of Nature.

Even bees, the little almsmen of spring bowers, know there is richest juice in poison-flowers.

I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey.

Art is nature speeded up and God slowed down.

I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great.

Everything that can be created has already been done in creation. As human beings, we can only imitate, not create as such.

O thou sculptor, painter, poet! Take this lesson to thy heart: That is best which lieth nearest; Shape from that thy work of art.

Everywhere bees go racing with the hours, / For every bee becomes a drunken lover, / Standing upon his head to sup the flowers.

Once in a golden hour, I cast to earth a seed, And up there grew a flower, That others called a weed.

Poetry is the honey of all flowers, the quintessence of all sciences, the marrow of wit, and the very phrase of angels.

How to extract its honey from the flower of the world. That is my everyday business. I am as busy as a bee about it. I ramble over fields on that errand and am never so happy as when I feel myself heavy with honey and wax. I am like a bee searching the livelong day for the sweets of nature.

Art is the child of Nature; yes, Her darling child, in whom we trace The features of the mother's face, Her aspect and her attitude, All her majestic loveliness Chastened and softened and subdued Into a more attractive grace, And with a human sense imbued. He is the greatest artist, then, Whether of pencil or of pen, Who follows Nature.

Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.

The dense and godly wear consistency as a flower, the imaginative fling it joyfully behind them.

The botanist should make interest with the bees if he would know when the flowers open and when they close.

Creativity is no less challenging or exciting when the mystery is stripped from the creative process. The most beautiful flowers grow under careful cultivation from common soil.

If it is the love of that which your work represents--if, being a landscape painter, it is love of hills and trees that moves you--if, being a figure painter, it is love of human beauty, and human soul that moves you--if, being a flower or animal painter, it is love, and wonder, and delight in petal and in limb that move you, then the Spirit is upon you, and the earth is yours, and the fullness thereof.

Philip Glass once told me, "They can always copy what you've done, but they can't copy what you're going to do."