Omnis mundi creatura Quasi liber et pictura Nobis est, et speculum. Each creature of the world Is as a book, a picture, And a mirror to us.

-Alan of Lille also known as  'Alanus de Insulis'
c.1170  De Incarnatione Christi (Rhythmus  Alter), l.1^3.

Perhaps the artist who seeks dignity above all in his 'historia', ought to represent very few figures; for as paucity of words imparts majesty to a prince, provided histhoughts and orders are understood, so the presence of only the strictly necessary numbers of bodies confers dignity on a picture.

-Alberti, Leon Battista
  On Painting (translated by Cecil Grayson).

That is the best part of beauty, which a picture cannot express.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  Essays, no.43,'Of Beauty'.

The crucified Jesus is the only accurate picture of God the world has ever seen.

-Baker,John Austin
  The Foolishness of God.

One picture is worth ten thousand words.

-Barnard, Frederick R
  In Printer's Ink,10 Mar.

The main thing a musician would like to do is to give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things he knows and senses in the universe.

-Coltrane,John
  Quoted in sleeve-note to the re-issue of Coltrane's Sound (originally published1961).

When I set down to make a sketch from nature, the first thing Itry to do istoforgetthat Ihave ever seena picture.

-Constable,John
Quoted in C R Leslie Memoirs of theLife of John Constable (1843).

Mr Lely, I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts, and everything as you see me, otherwise I will never paya farthing for it.

-Cromwell, Oliver
  Remark to Sir Peter Lely, who was about to paint his portrait. Quoted in H  Walpole Anecdotes of Painting in England, vol.3 (1763).

Each individual work serves as an expression of our most personal state of mind at that particular moment and of the inescapable, imperative need for release by means of an appropriate act of creation: in the rhythm, form, colour and mood of a picture.

-Feininger, Lyonel
  Letter to Paul Westheim, quoted in Wolf-Dieter Dube The Expressionists (1972).

   A picture that is beautiful, or that comes off, or that works, looks as if it was all made at one stroke.

-Frankenthaler, Helen
  Quoted in Ian Crofton (ed)  A Dictionary of  Art Quotations (1988).

The movie-makers are able to put more reality into a picture about theterrors of life at the ocean bottom than into a tale of two Milwaukeeans in love.

-Hecht, Ben
  In news reports,13  Jun.

I always try to write as good as the best picture that was ever painted.

-Hemingway, Ernest Millar
Quoted in the Saturday Review, 9 May1964.

The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture.

-Hitchcock, SirAlfred Joseph
Quoted in Fran c° ois Truffaut Hitchcock (1968).

I regret very much that I have painted a picture that requires any description.

-Homer,Winslow
On being asked about the meaning of a painting by a dealer. Quoted by Andrea Bennett in the NewYork Times Book Review, 15 Sep1991.

I want every family in America to have a carpet on the floor and a picture on the wall. After bread, you've got to have a picture on the wall.

-Johnson, Lyndon B(aines) also called LBJ
On visiting Pittsburgh's Polish^Czech area. Quoted in  Alistair Cooke The Americans (1980).

The identifying ourselves with the visual image of ourselves has become an instinct; the habit is already old. The picture of me, the me that is seen, is me.

-Lawrence, D(avid) H(erbert)
  'Art and Morality'.

The function of news is to signalize an event, the functionoftruth istobring to lightthehiddenfacts, toset them into relationwith each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act.Only at those points, where social conditions take recognizable and measurable shape, do the body of truth and the body of news coincide.

-Lippmann,Walter
  Public Opinion, ch.23.

His writing bears the same relation to poetry which a Turkey carpet bears to a picture.

-1st Baron
  'Robert Montgomery', in the Edinburgh Review,  Apr.

The Last Picture Show.

-McMurtry, LarryJeff
   Title of novel, subsequently filmed.

Dass nicht alles auf einmal da ist, bleibt als Bedingung des Lebens und der Erz a« hlung zu achten, und man wird sich doch wohl gegen die gottgegebenen Formen menschlicher Erkenntnis nich auflehnen wollen. Let usnot forgetthe conditionof lifeasnarration: that we can never see the whole picture at onceöunless we propose to throw overboard all the God-conditioned forms of human knowledge.

-Mann,Thomas
  Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain), vol.2.