Excellency Quotes - page 3
Most Illustrious Lord and My Lord, I received the other day, with due reverence your Lordship's letter, together with the canvas and framing. Having read and noted the contents, I considered them so pretty and ingenious as to require no improvement of any kind; and the more I thought over it the more I became convinced that the greatness of art amongst the ancients was due to the assistance they received from great princes content to leave to the painters the credit and renown derived from their own ingenuity in bespeaking pictures. Can I therefore doubt that, if God enables me to satisfy in any part the wishes of Your Lordship, I shall have all credit for my labour? Yet I shall, after all have done no more than give shape to that which received its spirit - the most essential part - from Your Excellency.
Titian
Excellent Lord: -Knowing your Excellency's love for painting and your passion for protecting it as shown in the patronage of Ginlio Eomano; -being further desirous of pleasing your Excellency, -I have taken the opportunity of Messer Pietro Aretino's arrival [in Venice] to paint his likeness, and as he comes - a second St. Paul -to preach the virtues of your Excellency, and I likewise know that you are fond of so faithful a servant because of his many virtues, I make you herewith a present of his portrait. But I also bear in remembrance the Signor Girolamo Adorno who adored the Marquis of Mantua, and as he was a qualified gentleman, I send your Excellency a present of him also. These may not be gifts worthy of so great a person as your Excellency.... Most devoted servant, Titiano Vecellio.
Titian
Excellency, please sign. I hate to say it, but my job is not the easiest one. Prague, your capital- I should be terribly sorry if I were compelled to destroy this beautiful city. But I would have to do it, to make the English and French understand that my air force can do all it claims to do. Because they still don't want to believe this is so, and I should like an opportunity of giving them proof.
Hermann Göring
Your Excellency, I am in receipt of His Majesty's royal order, which your excellency communicated to me on the 6th inst., accepting the offer of my work, the 'Caprichos' on eighty copper plate engraved with aqua-fortis by my hand, which I will hand to the Royal Calografia with the lot of prints which I had printed by way of precaution, amounting to two hundred and forty copies of eighty prints, in order not to defraud His Majesty in the least, and for my own satisfaction as to my mode of procedure. I am very grateful for the pension of twelve thousand reals which His Majesty has been pleased to grant to my son [Xavier Goya], for which I offer my best thanks to His Majesty, and to your excellency.... I only desire your excellency's orders, and that you may keep well. May God preserve your excellency's valuable life for many years... Your excellency's obedient and grateful servant, Franco de Goya.
Francisco Goya
His Excellency Don José Palafox [famous Spanish general, who recaptured Zaragoza from the French army) called me to go to Zaragoza this week in order to see and examine the ruins of that city, with the intention that I should paint the glories of its inhabitants, something from which I cannot be excused because the glory of my native land [Goya was born in Zaragoza] interests me so much.
Francisco Goya
My [dear] Sir: Let me first offer my kind regards. I agree that I should come soon to see how the picture accords with the rest. As regards the price, I certainly deserve 200 pounds for it, but shall be content with whatever His Excellency pays me. And if you, Sir, do not deem it presumptuous, I shall not neglect to requite the favor. Your humble and devoted servant Rembrandt - It [the picture] will show to [the] best advantage in His Excellency's gallery, since there it will be [displayed] in bright light.
Rembrandt
I cannot myself believe that anyone in this Chamber, and very few in the community as a whole, would wish to reverse all our previous policies and choose stabilization rather than growth; and it would certainly go contrary to the other views expressed by honourable Members about the need to promote the further growth of trade and industry. Not only would we be fore-going the creation of additional wealth and what this can bring, and has brought, in social advance, but we would also, I believe, permanently damage that climate of economic activity which has taken us so far and so fast. This would be particularly unwise, I suggest, in the face of those relatively darker clouds referred to by Your Excellency.
John James Cowperthwaite
The infinite and uncreated spirit that we usually call GOD, a substance of the highest virtue and excellency, produced everything else by emanative causality. God thus is the primary substance, the rest, the secondary; if the former created matter with a power of moving itself, he, the primary substance, is still the cause of that motion as well as of the matter, and yet we rightly say that it is matter which moves itself. "We may define this kind of spirit we speak of to be a substance indiscernible, that can move itself, that can penetrate, contract, and dilate itself, and can also penetrate, move, and alter matter," which is the third emanation.
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
Most Illustrious and best Lord Uncle, - Having asked Titian, the bearer of these presents, to execute certain work for me, he declared himself unable to serve me at present, because of a promise to do certain things for your Excellency which require time. For this reason I send him to attend your Excellency. But I beg he may be sent back at once to expedite the work I have on hand for him, which will take but a few days. As soon as he shall have done he can return to the service of your Excellency, and in this your Excellency will do me a singular pleasure to whom I stand greatly recommended.
Titian
Our master Titian is quite disconsolate at the loss of his wife, who was buried yesterday. He told me that in the troubled time of her sickness he was unable to work at the portrait of the lady Cornelia or at the picture of the 'i Nude' which he is doing for our most illustrious Lord; but he thinks the latter will be a fine thing, and he hopes to finish it before the month is out. Meanwhile he desires to know how his Lordship likes the 'St. Sebastian' lately sent to him, which he admits is but an ordinary performance as compared with the nudes, and one which he only produced as an entertainment in token of the devotion which he feels for his Excellency.
Titian