You must always work.

Black is the queen of colours.

The nude alone is well dressed

I invent nothing, I rediscover.

Patience is also a form of action.

Nobody does good to men with impunity.

The artist has only to trust his eyes.

My drawings are the result of my sculpture.

Sculpture is the art of the hole and the lump.

To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature

The more simple we are, the more complete we become.

To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature.

In art, immorality cannot exist. Art is always sacred.

Even with all the documents, you can never forge nature

The realities of nature surpass our most ambitious dreams.

He who is discouraged after a failure is not a real artist.

One must work, nothing but work, and one must have patience.

Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need.

Love your calling with passion, it is the meaning of your life.

I have unbounded admiration for the nude. I worship it like a god.

True artists are almost the only men who do their work for pleasure.

What is commonly called ugliness in nature can in art become full of beauty.

I would have to talk for a year to repeat a single on of my works with words.

I am like a moon that shines on an immense, unknown sea where ships never pass

Mystery is like a kind of atmosphere which bathes the greatest works of the masters.

The delicate droop of the petals standing out in relief, is like the eyelid of a child.

Art is the pleasure of a spirit that enters nature and discovers that it too has a soul.

There should be no argument in regard to morality in art. There is no morality in nature.

The work of art is already within the block of marble. I just chop off whatever isn't needed.

I know very well that one must fight, for one is often in contradiction to the spirit of the age.

The human body is first and foremost a mirror to the soul and its greatest beauty comes from that.

People say I think too much about women, yet, after all what is there more important to think about?

It is the artist who is truthful and it is photography which lies, for in reality time does not stop

The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live. Be a man before being an artist!

There is no need to create. Genius comes only to those who know how to use their eyes and their intelligence.

The artist enriches the soul of humanity. The artist delights people with a thousand different shades of feeling.

Mere exactitude, of which photography and moulage [life casting] are the lowest forms, does not inspire feelings.

Inside you there's an artist you don't know about. He's not interested in how things look different in moonlight.

The only principle in art is to copy what you see. Dealers in aesthetics to the contrary, every other method is fatal.

The body always expresses the spirit whose envelope it is. And for him who can see, the nude offers the richest meaning.

There is nothing ugly in art except that which is without character, that is to say, that which offers no outer or inner truth.

I believe that photography can create great works of art, but hitherto it has been extraordinarily bourgeois and babbling. (1908)

Man's naked form belongs to no particular moment in history; it is eternal, and can be looked upon with joy by the people of all ages.

If we now seek the spiritual significance of the technique of Michelangelo we shall find that his sculpture expressed restless energy.

An artist worthy of the name should express all the truth of nature, not only the exterior truth, but also, and above all, the inner truth.

How painful it is to find that my figure can be of no help to my future... how painful to see it rejected on account of a slanderous suspicion!

Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which nature herself is animated.

I grant you that the artist does not see Nature as she appears to the vulgar, because his emotion reveals to him the hidden truths beneath appearances.

The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation.

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