Weekend Words: Forge
"A bad forgery's the ultimate insult."
Another forgery scandal has rocked the art world. Earlier this month, Sotheby’s declared a portrait by Frans Hals a “modern forgery” and reimbursed the buyer the full $10.8 million paid for the work.
According to the BBC, the art historian Bendor Grosvenor had this to say about the forger: “Whoever has subsumed the aura of Hals when he painted this also came up with a totally fresh composition. If these [paintings] are fake, and I believe they are very likely to be, we are dealing with the best faker of all time.”
The farther behind I leave the past, the closer I am to forging my own character.
—Isabelle Eberhardt
Practice and thought might gradually forge many an art.
—Virgil
Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;
Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.
—William Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis
The writing on the wall may be a forgery.
—Ralph Hodgson
A bad forgery’s the ultimate insult.
—Jonathan Gash
Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.
—Jean-Paul Sartre
Eat not garlic nor onions, lest they find out thy boorish origin by the smell; walk slowly and speak deliberately, but not in such a way as to make it seem thou art listening to thyself, for all affectation is bad. Dine sparingly and sup more sparingly still; for the health of the whole body is forged in the workshop of the stomach.
—Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
In the future the way that Whittaker Chambers was able to carry out forgery by typewriter will be disclosed.
—Alger Hiss
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear
—William Blake, “London”
Prejudice is the sole author of infamies: how many acts are so qualified by an opinion forged out of naught but prejudice!
—Marquis De Sade
Man’s mind is like a store of idolatry and superstition; so much so that if a man believes his own mind it is certain that he will forsake God and forge some idol in his own brain.
—John Calvin
We must be compelled to hold this doctrine to be false, and the old and new law called the Old and New Testament, to be impositions, fables and forgeries.
—Thomas Paine
We believe — we believe that, if we tell the people the truth, that they will act bigger than the pettiness we see in Washington, D.C. We believe it is possible to forge bipartisan compromise, and stand up for our conservative principles.
—Chris Christie
“You are fettered,” said Scrooge, trembling. “Tell me why?”
“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.”
―Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
