Commonplace books (or commonplaces) are a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. They have been kept from antiquity, and were kept particularly during the Renaissance and in the nineteenth century. Such books are essentially scrapbooks filled with items of every kind: recipes, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, proverbs, prayers, legal formulas.

I'm an inveterate collector of quotations, This seems like a good way to share them.

OF ART:

One must begin with an idea, but only a vague idea. [Picasso]

The way to begin, Preston, is to begin. [Gertrude Stein]

Work, as it were, with half your mind: the happier half, the half that does not bother. [Hilaire Belloc]

The element of surprise in the creation of a work of art is, to me, the most important factor – surprise to the artist himself as well as to others. [Yves Tanguy]

Painting requires fantasy but also skill, in order to find things which have never been seen before, in order  to find something beyond the shadow of natural objects, and to fix it with the hand, so that can be made to exist what does not exist. [Cennini]

The painting develops before my eyes, unfolding its surprises as it progresses. It is this that gives me the sense of complete liberty, and for this reason I am incapable of forming a plan or making a sketch beforehand. [Yves Tanguy]

The image ceases to be merely a source of aesthetic pleasure and becomes a new instrument of metaphysical knowledge for the artist. [Balakian]

His interest in his work began when the paper was before him and the pen in his hand. And so, in one sense, he may be said never to have known what he wanted to do, while, in another, he knew very precisely indeed. [Arthur Symons on Aubrey Beardsley]

The artist is looking for something. He doesn’t know what path will lead him to his goal. The artisan takes paths he knows, to reach a goal which he also knows. [Pierre Soulages]

Showing or not showing one’s work does not make it any better or worse. So let it go at that. [Georgia O’Keefe]

A style so inimitable that he himself could not imitate it when he tried. [source lost]

Art and music do for me what religion, apparently, does for others. I’m not going to my studio, I’m going to church.
“Oh. Do you make a lot of money going to church?” [JLH]


OF HUMAN  PERCEPTION:

Perception isn’t a fact, it’s a process. Not a noun but a verb. [JLH]

There is a recurrent moment when we shift from looking at a work to actually seeing it. It’s like entering a waking dream. [Peter Schjeldahl]

In photography, as everywhere, there are those who know how to see and others who don’t even know how to look. [Felix Nadar]

I just twiddled my eyes and then I saw it directly. [Lewis Carroll]

Color is a matter of perception, a result of the effect of light on the eye and brain…In terms of physics, the color wheel is a wholly artificial device. [Ball]

The visual cortex has a mind of its own. [Hartnett]

Vision is more like a song than a painting.” [Hawkins]


OF LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING:

Life might be defined as one of the many properties of carbon atoms. [source lost]

Atoms are waves drifting on an infinite, invisible, immaterial sea of potentiality [Challoner]

Matter tends to exist where events tend to occur. [source lost]

Alchemy was an inquiry into the nature of the world in which the properties of matter and its transformation were inseparable from the attributes of Man and his spiritual life. [Ball]

There are as many parallel universes as there are sentient beings. [JLH]

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact. [Sherlock Holmes]

As soon as you think you have the answer, you have closed the path. [from Maisie Dobbs]

If a question is so framed as to be unanswerable, then it is not a matter for regret that it remains unanswered. [Ayer]

I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned. [Richard Feynman]

The right way to go easy is to forget the right way and forget that the going is easy. [Chuang Tzu]

Each of the familiar miracles strengthens us. [Christopher Morely]

Life is not a novel but a series of short stories, [JLH]

You can’t bullshit the ocean. It isn’t listening. [Wm. T.  Wiley]

A pilgrimage can’t compare to a good laugh. [Chuang Tzu]


SOURCES:

Ayer, A.J. The Claims of Philosophy.
Ball, Phillip. Bright Earth
Cennini, Cennino. Libro dell’ arte.
Challoner, Jack. The Atom: a Visual Tour]
Hartnett, Kevin. “Secrets of Vision,” Wired Magazine.
Hawkins, Jeff.  On Intelligence.