George Perkins Marsh Quotes

Art is the microscope of the mind, which sharpens the wit as the other does the sight; and converts every object into a little universe in itself. Art may be said to draw aside the veil from nature. To those who are perfectly unskilled in the practice, unimbued with the principles of art, most objects present only a confused mass.

Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither. At every point in nature there is something to see. My work contains similar possibilities for the changing focus of the eye.

Seeing is in some respect an art, which must be learnt.

There is creation in the eye.

At the heart of art is learning to see

A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera.

To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.

While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.

It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary.

My work isn't about form. It's about seeing.

I don’t have a philosophy. I have a camera. I look into the camera and take pictures. My photographs are the tiniest part of what I see that could be photographed. They are fragments of endless possibilities.

You put your camera around your neck along with putting on your shoes, and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you. The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

It is harder to see than it is to express. The whole value of art rests in the artist's ability to see well into what is before him.

The most pleasurable thing in the world, for me, is to see something and then translate how I see it.

An artist's business is only to see.

Seeing is a gift that comes with practice.

I once taught art to adults in a night course. I had a woman who painted her back yard, and she said it was the first time she had ever really looked at it. I think everyone sees beauty. Art is a way to respond

Leica, schmeica. The camera doesn't make a bit of difference. All of them can record what you are seeing. But you have to see.

The camera is for us a tool, not a pretty mechanical toy ... people think far too much about techniques and not enough about seeing.

We are as much as we see. Faith is sight and knowledge. The hands only serve the eyes.

Organized perception is what art is all about.

The question is not what you look at – but how you look & whether you see.

Speaking, when you have something to say, is like looking. But who looks? If people could see properly, and see whole, they would all be painters. And it's because people have no idea how to look that they hardly ever understand.

But we have been taught to see before our eyes have found out a way of seeing for themselves.

An object is frequently not seen, from not knowing how to see it, rather than from any defect of the organ of vision.