I always feel the desire to look for the extraordinary in ordinary things; to suggest, not to impose, to leave always a slight touch of mystery in my paintings.

The craft of painting has virtually disappeared. There is hardly anyone left who really possesses it. For evidence one has only to look at the painters of this century.

Painting what I experience, translating what I feel, is like a great liberation. But it is also work, self-examination, consciousness, criticism, struggle.

I refuse to confide and don't like it when people write about art.

Painting is the passage from the chaos of the emotions to the order of the possible.

I will always find even the worst paintings that attempt some kind of representation better than the best invented paintings.

I always feel the desire to look for the extraordinary in ordinary things; to suggest, not to impose, to leave always a slight touch of mystery in my paintings.

The best way to begin is to say: Balthus is a painter of whom nothing is known. And now let us have a look at his paintings.

One must always draw, draw with the eyes, when one cannot draw with a pencil.

Painting is a source of endless pleasure, but also of great anguish.

Painting is a language which cannot be replaced by another language. I don't know what to say about what I paint, really.

The desire for liberty has also made itself felt as struggle against domestic tyranny or arbitrary rule.

I want the municipality to be a helping hand to the man with a desire of sympathy, to help the fallen when it is not in their power to help themselves.

A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.

We have no desire to convince anyone that there is only one way by which faith can be acquired.

But the deep desire for peace remained with the American people.

I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.

It was also during my tenure of office that the Japanese Government agreed to the conclusion of a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and signed it, pursuing a policy in harmony with the avowed desire of the people.

'Tis very certain the desire of life prolongs it.

One of the things that has always motivated me to write is the desire to get it out and look at it in an objective way, so that it doesn't cause me any serious pain by staying inside.

In human history, the desire for revenge and the desire for loot have often been closely associated.

I see Canada as a country torn between a very northern, rather extraordinary, mystical spirit which it fears and its desire to present itself to the world as a Scotch banker.

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

The genius of the economic machine is in its ability to convert these indulgences into profitability. It converts desire into attention, a grip on our eyeballs and eardrums, which in turn can be marketed to advertisers.

I don't know what keeps me going. Sometimes I wonder... I think it's just pure perseverance and wanting to succeed and having that burning desire to always have success.

If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.

It's a great mistake, I think, to put children off with falsehoods and nonsense, when their growing powers of observation and discrimination excite in them a desire to know about things.

Let not a man do what his sense of right bids him not to do, nor desire what it forbids him to desire. This is sufficient. The skillful artist will not alter his measures for the sake of a stupid workman.

I was interested in telescopes and the way they worked because I had an intense desire to see what things looked like, so I learned how to use telescopes and find things in the sky.

When you do portraits professionally it's not a desire, it's for money.

My desire, my passion, was to help moms with practical encouragement.

Sometimes I'm uncomfortable with the level of fame I've got! It all depends on the day and what's going on. I don't desire any more fame. I don't need it.

This life is a hospital in which every patient is possessed with a desire to change his bed.

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.

The planter, the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer... form the great body of the people of the United States, they are the bone and sinew of the country men who love liberty and desire nothing but equal rights and equal laws.

Fashion is the science of appearances, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.

It is an everlasting desire to make my dreams come true. And it's getting to the point now where it's like, come on I want my dreams to come true so that I can get on with the rest of my life. Sometimes I think about the rest of my life when I'm done.

Perhaps our only sickness is to desire a truth which we cannot bear rather than to rest content with the fictions we manufacture out of each other.

Almost every desire a poor man has is a punishable offence.

It's so much better to desire than to have.

But on the other hand, while disclaiming any change in my opinions, I desire equally to disclaim the representations of those opinions which have been put forward in some quarters.

And trust, yes, which is important, but that is what I aim towards. Now that is difficult for some people, and with that desire to get things as good as possible, I would say that I'm probably regarded as quite prickly to work with.

Young people are threatened... by the evil use of advertising techniques that stimulate the natural inclination to avoid hard work by promising the immediate satisfaction of every desire.

An original is a creation motivated by desire. Any reproduction of an originals motivated be necessity. It is marvelous that we are the only species that creates gratuitous forms. To create is divine, to reproduce is human.

For you see this scripture fulfilled this day and therefore I desire you as you tender the Lord and the church and commonwealth to consider and look what you do.

Your chances of success are directly proportional to the degree of pleasure you desire from what you do. If you are in a job you hate, face the fact squarely and get out.

The desire to write grows with writing.

I am an opponent of Saddam Hussein, but an opponent also, of the sanctions that have killed a million Iraqi children and an opponent of the United States' apparent desire to plunge the Middle East into a new and devastating war.

Death is the great hope of all life; the desire to expend itself; to be used and consumed by its own longing for itself.