Quote collection
417 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I devour nature ceaselessly. I exaggerate, sometimes I make changes in the subject; but still I don't invent the whole picture. On the contrary, I find it already there. It's a question of picking out what one wants from nature."
"I felt my energy return and that I said to myself, in any event I'll recover from it, I'll pick up my pencil that I put down in my great discouragement and I'll get back to drawing, and from then on, it seems to me, everything has changed for me."
"There may be a time in life when one is tired of everything and feels as if all one does is wrong, and there maybe some truth in it- do you think this is a feeling one must try to forget and to banish, or is it 'the longing for God,' which one must not fear, but cherish to see if it may bring us some good? Is it 'the longing for God' which leads us to make a choice which we never regret? Let us keep courage and try to be patient and gentle. And not mind being eccentric, and make distinction between good and evil."
"People are often unable to do anything, imprisoned as they are in I don't know what kind of terrible, terrible, oh such terrible cage."
"Art is but imitation of nature."
"I feel a certain calm. There is safety in the midst of danger. What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?"
"That this awareness of my own fallibility will prevent me from making many mistakes doesn't alter the fact that I'm bound to make a great many mistakes anyway. But if we fall, we get up again!"
"In the fullness of artistic life there is, and remains, and will always come back at times, that homesick longing for the truly ideal life that can never come true."
"It is a sad and very melancholy scene, which must strike everyone who knows and feels that we also have to pass one day through the valley of the shadow of death, and “que la fin de la vie humaine, ce sont des larmes ou des cheveux blancs.” What lies beyond this is a great mystery that only God knows, but He has revealed absolutely through His word that there is a resurrection of the dead."
"Seeing that I am so busily occupied with myself just now, I want to try to paint my self-portrait in writing."
"The sight of stars makes me dream."
"You have to first experience what you want to express"
"I am no friend of present-day Christianity, though its Founder was sublime."
"Do not think too deeply about these things - gradually they will become clearer to you"
"It astonishes me already when I compare my condition today with what it was a month ago. Before that I knew well enough one could fracture one's legs and arms and recover afterward, but I did not know that you could fracture the brain in your head and recover from that too."
"When using colors to recreate a general harmony of tones in nature, one loses it by painfully exact imitation. One keeps it by recreating in an equivalent color range, and that may not be exactly, or far from exactly, like the model."
"...to look at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots of a map representing towns and villages. Why, I ask myself, should the shining dots of the sky not be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?"
"One must spoil as many canvases as one succeeds with."
"For instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I see before me, I make more arbitrary use of colour to express myself more forcefully."
"Seek only light and freedom and do not immerse yourself too deeply in the worldly mire."