Great Throughts Treasury

"Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one's will. Virtue, good, evil are nothing but words, unless one takes them apart in order to build something with them; they do not win their true meaning until one knows how to apply them."

"Life is merely a fraction of a second. An infinitely small amount of time to fulfill our desires, our dreams, our passions."

"Literary poetry in a painter is something special, and is neither illustration nor the translation of writing by form. "

"Look closely at the Japanese; they draw admirably and yet in them you will see life outdoors and in the sun without shadows."

"Many people say that I don't know how to draw because I don't draw particular forms. When will they understand that execution, drawing and color (in other words, style) must be in harmony with the poem?"

"Many excellent cooks are spoilt by going into the arts."

"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!"

"Oh mysterious world... I have become better for having understood and having loved thy human soul – a flower which has ceased to bloom and whose fragrance no one henceforth will breathe. "

"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."

"Nothing so resembles a daub as a masterpiece."

"Oh yes! He loved yellow, did good Vincent... When the two of us were together in Arles, both of us insane, and constantly at war over beautiful colors, I adored red; where could I find a perfect vermilion? "

"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."

"On an instrument you start from one tone. In painting you start from several."

"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. "

"Perhaps I have no talent, but all vanity aside – I do not believe that anyone makes an artistic attempt, no matter how small, without having a little – or there are many fools. "

"Painting is the most beautiful of all arts. In it, all sensations are condensed, at its aspect everyone may create romance at the will of his imagination, and at a glance have his soul invaded by the most profound memories, no efforts of memory, everything summed up in one moment. Complete art which sums up all the others and completes them."

"Seek art and abstraction in nature by dreaming in the presence of it. "

"Poor artist! You gave away part of your soul when you painted the picture which you are now trying to dispose of. "

"Silence! I am learning to know the silence of a Tahitian night. "

"Slyly, banteringly, but also overbearingly, the critic – the one who does not swallow anything whole, who waits until posterity has consecrated it before... howling – is among those who howl their admiration the way they howl their insults: don't be afraid, don't tremble – the beast doesn't have any nails or teeth, or even brain: it is stuffed. "

"Sometimes people accuse me of being incomprehensible only because they look for an explicative side to my pictures which is not there. "

"Sooner or later people will learn to recognize your worth — if you have any. Above all, don't sweat over a painting; a great sentiment can be rendered immediately. Dream on it and look for the simplest form in which you can express it."

"Stressing output is the key to improving productivity, while looking to increase activity can result in just the opposite."

"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. "

"Take care not to step on the foot of a learned idiot. His bite is incurable."

"Thanks to our cinctures and corsets we have succeeded in making an artificial being out of woman... we take away from her possibilities of development. Thus modeled... our women have nothing in common with us, and this, perhaps, may not be without grave moral and social disadvantages. "

"The great artist is a formulation of the greatest intelligence: He is the recipient of sensations which are the most delicate and consequently the most invisible expressions of the brain."

"The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public."

"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."

"The landscape with its violent, pure colors dazzled and blinded me. I was always uncertain."

"The public wants to understand and learn in a single day, a single minute, what the artist has spent years learning. "

"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. "

"There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite."

"The work of a man is the explanation of the man. "

"Under the continual contact with the pebbles my feet have become hardened and used to the ground. My body, almost constantly nude, no longer suffers from the sun. Civilization is falling from me little by little. I am beginning to think simply, to feel only very little hatred for my neighbor - rather, to love him."

"We never really know what stupidity is until we have experimented on ourselves."

"Whatever may happen the sun will rise tomorrow as it rose today, beneficent and serene."

"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."

"Today one can dare anything, and, furthermore, nobody is surprised."

"There is no such thing as exaggerated art. I even believe that there is salvation only in extreme. "

"Why did I hesitate to put all this glory of the sun on my canvas?"

"With practice the craft will come almost of itself, in spite of you and all the more easily if you think of something besides technique."