It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block.
Where do we come from? What are We? Where are we going?
One’s state of mind is three-quarters of what counts, so it has to be carefully nurtured if you want to do something great and lasting.
In art there are only two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists.
I am entering into the truth, into nature.
Look closely at the Japanese; they draw admirably and yet in them you will see life outdoors and in the sun without shadows...
Lacking many of the essential implements, it irritated me to be reduced to impotence in the face of artistic projects to which I had passionately given myself.
If instead of a figure you put the shadow only of a person, you have found an original starting point, that strangeness of which you have calculated.
My God! How terrible these money questions are for an artist!
Oh mysterious world of all light, thou hast made a light shine within me, and I have grown in admiration of thy antique beauty, which is the immemorial youth of nature.
Follow the masters! But why should one follow them? The only reason they are masters is that they didn’t follow anybody!
There are tonalities which are noble and others which are vulgar, harmonies which are calm or consoling, and others which are exciting because of their boldness.
On an instrument you start from one tone. In painting you start from several.
It is well for young men to have a model, but let them draw the curtain over it while they are painting.
Machines have come, art has fled, and I am far from thinking photography can help us.
The work of a man is the explanation of the man.
There are noble tones, ordinary ones, tranquil harmonies, consoling ones, others which excite by their vigour.
The public wants to understand and learn in a single day, a single minute, what the artist has spent years learning.
My eyes close and uncomprehendingly see the dream in the infinite space that stretches away, elusive, before me.
No one wants my painting because it is different from other people’s peculiar, crazy public that demands the greatest possible degree of originality on the painter’s part and yet won’t accept him unless his work resembles that of the others!