I wished to copy nature. I could not. But I was satisfied when I discovered the sun, for instance, could not be reproduced, but only represented by something else.
The landscape thinks itself in me and I am its consciousness.
You have no idea how life-giving it is to find around one a youth that agrees not to bury one on the spot.
You must think. The eye is not enough; it needs to think as well.
Time and reflection change the sight little by little ’till we come to understand.
Everything in nature takes its form from the sphere, the cone and the cylinder.
Monet is only an eye, but my God, what an eye!
Perhaps I was born too early. I was more the painter of your generation than of mine.
The approbation of others is a stimulus of which one must sometimes be wary. The feeling of one’s own strength makes one modest.
Nature is the best instructor.
Under this fine rain I breathe in the innocence of the world. I feel coloured by the nuances of infinity. At this moment I am one with my picture. We are an iridescent chaos...
One is neither too scrupulous nor too sincere nor too submissive to nature; but one is more or less master of one’s model, and, above all, of the means of expression.
I am beginning to consider myself stronger than all those around me, and you know that the good opinion I have of myself has only been reached after mature consideration.
All my compatriots are asses compared to me.
I cannot attain the intensity that is unfolded before my senses. I have not the magnificent richness of colouring that animates nature.
The contour eludes me.
Michelangelo is a constructor, and Rafael an artist who, great as he is, is always limited by the model. When he tries to be thoughtful he falls below the niveau of his great rival.
I am progressing very slowly, for nature reveals herself to me in very complex forms; and the progress needed is incessant.
When a picture isn’t realized, you pitch it in the fire and start another one!
The Louvre is the book in which we learn to read.
Sometimes I imagine colors as if they were living ideas, being of pure reason with which to communicate. Nature is not on the surface, it is deep down.