Vienna

When I wished to sing of love, it turned to sorrow. And when I wished to sing of sorrow, it was transformed for me into love.

(Franz Schubert)

With the coming of spring, I am calm again.

(Gustav Mahler)

Merry Christmas

Vienna

Whoever wants to know something about me as an artist which alone is significant. They should look attentively at my pictures and there seek to recognise what I am and what I want.

(Gustav Klimt)

Something unpractical cannot be beautiful.

(Otto Wagner)

Vienna

A civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence. 

(Sigmund Freud)

Anyone who sees and paints a sky green and fields blue ought to be sterilized.

(Adolf Hitler)

Vienna

The streets of Vienna are paved with culture, the streets of other cities with asphalt.

(Karl Kraus)

God gives the wheat. He doesn't bake the bread.

(Austrian Proverb)

Bruges

In the market place of Bruges stands the Belfry old and brown;

Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o'er the town.

(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The Belfry of Bruges)

As he walked, the sad faded leaves were driven pitilessly around him by the wind, and under the mingling influences of autumn and evening, a craving for the quietude of the grave...overtook him with unwanted intensity.

(Georges Rodenbach. Bruges-La-Morte)

Brussels

I arrived in Brussels, about a hundred years ago, or the day before yesterday perhaps.....from the start, there was one place that tempted me, just behind the Theatre de la Monnaie, an old cafe full of old mouldings and faded mirrors whose name explodes in pseudo-erotic-gothic red neon: La Morte Subite.

(Maurice Bejart. La Morte Subite Journal in Time)

"Oysters are the most tender and delicate of all seafoods. They stay in bed all day and all night. They never work or take exercise, they are stupendous drinkers, and wait for their meals to come to them".

(Hector Bolithio. The Glorious Oyster)

Brussels

Life obliges me to do something, so I paint.

(Rene Magritte)

The goal of the EU is to form a region of freedom, security and justice. Freedom in this connection cannot be just freedom of the strong, but it must be  combined with fraternity and equality.

(Tarja Halowen)

Pumpkins

A house is never still in darkness to those who listen intently; there is the whispering in different chambers, an unearthly hand presses the snib of the window, the latch rises. Ghosts were created when the first man awoke in the night.

(J M Barrie)

One need not be a chamber to be haunted;

One need not be a house;

The brain has corridors surpassing material place.

(Emily Dickinson)

Fairfield Church

The church is near but the road is icy. The bar is far away but I will walk carefully.

(Russian proverb)

"I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit".

(Kamlil Gibran)

Chiswick House

A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.

(Frank Lloyd Wright)

It seems a paradox, but nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect.

(John Ruskin)