A puny body weakens the soul.
A thousand painters ought to be killed yearly. Say what you like: I'm every inch a painter.
A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.
An art which isn't based on feeling isn't an art at all.
Art is a harmony parallel with nature.
Don't be an art critic. Paint. There lies salvation.
Doubtless there are things in nature which have not yet been seen. If an artist discovers them, he opens the way for his successors.
For an Impressionist to paint from nature is not to paint the subject, but to realize sensations.
Genius is the ability to renew one's emotions in daily experience.
Here, on the river's verge, I could be busy for months without changing my place, simply leaning a little more to right or left.
I allow no one to touch me.
I am a pupil of Pissarro.
I am more a friend of art than a producer of painting.
I am sturdy. My soul is strong. Happiness lies in work.
I am the primitive of the method I have invented.
I ask you to pray for me, for once age has overtaken us, we find consolation only in religion.
I could paint for a hundred years, a thousand years without stopping and I would still feel as though I knew nothing.
I feel exploitation everywhere. I'm waiting to make a decision.
I feel the gentleman would like to get his hands on my study. Still, I feel almost inclined to try something with him.
I have nothing to hide in art. The initial force alone can bring anyone to the end he must attain.
I have sworn to die painting.
I lack the magnificent richness of color that animates nature.
I must be more sensible and realize that at my age, illusions are hardly permitted and they will always destroy me.
I must carry on. I must then realize from nature sketches; canvases, if I did any, would be only constructions after nature.
I paint as if I were Rothschild.
I pursue success by work. I despise all living painters but Monet and Renoir, and I want to succeed.
I see the dark side of things and so feel more and more forced to rely on others' guidance.
I want to die painting.
I'll always be grateful to the public of intelligent amateurs.
I'm beginning to see the promised land. Will I be like the great Hebrew chief or will I be able to enter?
I'm only a poor painter and doubtless the brush would be rather the means of expression put my heaven in my hands.
I'm too tired, too tired. I ought to be sensible, to stay at home, and do nothing but work.
I've come to the conclusion that it's not really possible to help others.
I've had much work on hand, which is what happens to every man who is somebody.
I've often made sketches of male and female bathers which I'd have liked to execute on a large scale.
If I delay in visiting you, the cause lies in the inextricable situation from which I'm burning to escape.
If I have left something unsaid, they will say it.
If I'd known how to organize my life, it would have suited me better. But a family forces one to make a lot of concessions.
If isolation tempers the strong, it is the stumbling-block of the uncertain.
Is art really the priesthood that demands the pure in heart who belong to it wholly?
Is it the factitious and the conventional that most surely succeed on earth and in the course of life?
It is impossible for emotion not to come on us in thinking of that time now flowed away.
It's always sad to renounce living as long as we are on earth.
It's so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas.
Keep good company - that is, go to the Louvre.
Mass and a douche are what keep me going.
My age and health will never allow me to realize the dream of art I've been pursuing all my life.
My nervous system is enfeebled, only work in oils can sustain me.
One does not substitute oneself for the past, one merely adds to it a new link.
Optics, developing in us through study, teach us to see.
Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one's sensations.
Painting is damned difficult - you always think you've got it, but you haven't.
People think how a sugar basin has no physiognomy, no soul. But it changes every day.
Pure drawing is an abstraction. Drawing and colour are not distinct, everything in nature is coloured.
Shadow is a colour as light is, but less brilliant; light and shadow are only the relation of two tones.
Shaking off my torpor, I emerge from my shell and am going to make all efforts to follow up your invitations.
Tell me, do you think I'm going mad? I sometimes wonder, you know.
The artist makes things concrete and gives them individuality.
The awareness of our own strength makes us modest.
The clear French landscape is as pure as a verse of Racine.
The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.
The greatest ones, you know them better than I: the Venetians and the Spaniards.
The most part of what I put in the mouth of the old painter are fragments of letters that will be published after my death.
The most seductive thing about art is the personality of the artist himself.
The olive tree is like an old friend. It knows all my life and gives me wise counsel. I should like to be buried under it.
The painter must enclose himself within his work; he must respond not with words, but with paintings.
The state of lassitude in which I find myself at the day's end doesn't permit me to present myself in a proper aspect before others.
The truth is in nature, and I shall prove it.
The world doesn't understand me and I don't understand the world, that's why I've withdrawn from it.
There are two things in the painter, the eye and the mind; each of them should aid the other.
Two sittings a day of my models and I'm totally exhausted.
Unfortunately the advanced age I've now reached makes the approach to new formulas of art hard for me.
We live in a rainbow of chaos.
We must not be content to memorize the beautiful formulas of our illustrious predecessors. Let us go out and study beautiful nature.
When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art.
Will I ever attain the end for which I have striven so much and so long? A vague sense of malaise persists.
With a painter's temperament, all that's needed are the means of expression sufficient to be intelligible to the wide public.
With an apple I will astonish Paris.
You say a new era in art is preparing; you sensed it coming; continue your studies without weakening. God will do the rest.
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