Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Life is hardly more than a fraction of a second. Such a little time to prepare oneself for eternity!
A time will come when people will think I am a myth, or rather something the newspapers have made up.
I was aware that on my skill as a painter would depend the physical and moral possession of the model.
It is useless to advise solitude for everyone; one must be strong enough to endure it and to work alone.
I am a great artist and I know it, it is because I am that I have been able to endure so much suffering.
It is well for young men to have a model, but let them draw the curtain over it while they are painting.
It was so simple to paint things as I saw them; to put without special calculation a red close to a blue.
In order to produce something new, you have to return to the original source, to the childhood of mankind.
There are noble tones, ordinary ones, tranquil harmonies, consoling ones, others which excite by their vigour.
Beware of luxury! Beware of acquiring the taste and need for it, under the pretext of providing for the morrow.
What still concerns me the most is: am I on the right track, am I making progress, am I making mistakes in art?
My eyes close and uncomprehendingly see the dream in the infinite space that stretches away, elusive, before me.
I sit at my door, smoking a cigarette and sipping my absinthe, and I enjoy every day without a care in the world
Poor artist! You gave away part of your soul when you painted the picture which you are now trying to dispose of.
I made a promise to keep a watch over myself, to remain master of myself, so that I might become a sure observer.
The public wants to understand and learn in a single day, a single minute, what the artist has spent years learning.
The flat sound of my wooden clogs on the cobblestones, deep, hollow and powerful, is the note I seek in my painting.
A great sentiment can be rendered immediately. Dream on it and look for the simplest form in which you can express it.
Literary poetry in a painter is something special, and is neither illustration nor the translation of writing by form.
Beautiful colors exist, though we do not realize it, and are glimpsed behind the veil that modesty has drawn over them.
It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block.
Follow the masters! But why should one follow them? The only reason they are masters is that they didn't follow anybody!
I have always wanted a mistress who was fat, and I have never found one. To make a fool of me, they are always pregnant.
Stressing output is the key to improving productivity, while looking to increase activity can result in just the opposite.
Life is merely a fraction of a second. An infinitely small amount of time to fulfill our desires, our dreams, our passions.
Look closely at the Japanese; they draw admirably and yet in them you will see life outdoors and in the sun without shadows.
The single most powerful tool for winning a negotiation is the ability to get up and walk away from the table without a deal
There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite.
Do not copy nature. Art is an abstraction. Rather, bring your art forth by dreaming in front of her and think more of creation.
Go on working, freely and furiously, you will make progress and sooner or later your worth will be recognised, if you have any.
All the joys - animal and human - of a free life are mine. I have escaped everything that is artificial, conventional, customary.
Sometimes people accuse me of being incomprehensible only because they look for an explicative side to my pictures which is not there.
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.
With practice the craft will come almost of itself, in spite of you and all the more easitly if you think of something besides technique.
A critic in my house sees some paintings. Greatly perturbed, he asks for my drawings. My drawings? Never! They are my letters, my secrets.
Color which, like music, is a matter of vibrations, reaches what is most general and therefore most indefinable in nature: its inner power.
Wherever I go I need a period of incubation so that I may learn the essence of nature, which never wishes to be understood or yield herself.
However depressed I may be I am not in the habit of giving up a project without having tried everything, even the 'impossible', to gain my end.
You may dream freely when you listen to music as well as when you look at painting. When you read a book you are the slave of the author's mind.
In art, all who have done something other than their predecessors have merited the epithet of revolutionary; and it is they alone who are masters.
The critics can say stupid things and we can enjoy them, if we have the legitimate feeling of superiority - the satisfaction of a duty accomplished.
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.
Nature has mysterious infinities and imaginative power. It is always varying the productions it offers to us. The artist himself is one of nature's means.
In Europe men and women have intercourse because they love each other. In the South Seas they love each other because they have had intercourse. Who is right?
Soon I'll be old and I've done precious little in this world for lack of time. I am always afraid I'll become senile before I've finished what I've undertaken.
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.
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.
Out in the sun, some painters are lined up. The first is copying nature, the second is copying the first, the third is copying the second... You see the sequence.
Nail up some indecency in plain sight over your door; from that time forward you will be rid of all respectable people,the most insupportable folk God has created.
Oh yes! he loved yellow, this good Vincent, this painter from Holland - those glimmers of sunlight rekindled his soul, that abhorred the fog, that needed the warmth.