Best 135 quotes of Paul Cezanne on MyQuotes

All my compatriots are asses compared to me.

All my life I have worked to be able to earn my living, but I thought that one could do good painting without attracting attention to one's private life. Certainly, an artist wishes to raise himself intellectually as much as possible, but the man must remain obscure. The pleasure must be found in the work.

All pictures painted inside in the studio will never be as good as the things done outside.

All the theories mess you up inside.

An art which isn't based on feeling isn't an art at all... feeling is the principle, the beginning and the end; craft, objective, technique - all these are in the middle.

An art which isn't based on feeling isn't an art at all.

An optical impression is produced on our organs of sight which makes us classify as light, half-tone or quartertone, the surfaces represented by colour sensations. So that light does not exist for the painter.

Art first of all is optical. That's where the material of our art is: in what our eyes think.

Art is a harmony parallel with nature.

A thousand painters ought to be killed yearly. Say what you like: I'm every inch a painter.

A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.

Chatter about art is almost always useless.

Design and color are not distinct and separate. As one paints, one draws. The more the colors harmonize, the more the design takes form. When color is at it's richest, form is at its fullest.

Don't be an art critic. Paint. There lies salvation.

Doubtless there are things in nature which have not yet been seen. If an artist discovers them, he opens the way for his successors.

Drawing and color are by no means two different things. As you paint, you draw... When color is at its richest, form is at its fullest.

Drawing and color are not separate at all; in so far as you paint, you draw. The more color harmonizes, the more exact the drawing becomes. When the color achieves richness, the form attains its fullness also

Everything in nature is formed upon the sphere, the cone and the cylinder. One must learn to paint these simple figures and then one can do all that he may wish.

Everything in nature takes its form from the sphere, the cone and the cylinder.

Everything vanishes, falls apart, doesn't it? Nature is always the same but nothing in her that appears to us lasts. Our art must render the thrill of her permanence, along with her elements, the appearance of all her changes. It must give us a taste of her Eternity.

For an Impressionist to paint from nature is not to paint the subject, but to realize sensations.

Fruits ... like having their portrait painted. They seem to sit there and ask your forgiveness for fading. Their thought is given off with their perfumes. They come with all their scents, they speak of the fields they have left, the rain which has nourished them, the daybreaks they have seen.

Genius is the ability to renew one's emotions in daily experience.

Get to the heart of what is before you and continue to express yourself as logically as possible.

Here, on the river's verge, I could be busy for months without changing my place, simply leaning a little more to right or left.

Here on the edge of the river, the motifs are very plentiful, the same subject seen from a different angle gives a subject for study of the highest interest and so varied that I think I could be occupied for months without changing my place, simply bending a little more to the right or left.

I advance all of my canvas at one time.

I am a pupil of Pissarro.

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.

I am progressing very slowly, for nature reveals herself to me in very complex forms; and the progress needed is incessant.

I am still searching for the expression of those confused sensations that we bring with us at birth.

I ask you to pray for me, for once age has overtaken us, we find consolation only in religion.

I cannot attain the intensity that is unfolded before my senses. I have not the magnificent richness of colouring that animates nature.

I could paint for a hundred years, a thousand years without stopping and I would still feel as though I knew nothing.

I'd like to combine melancholy and sunshine... There's a sadness in Provence which no one has expressed... I'd like to put reason in the grass and tears in the sky, like Poussin.

If isolation tempers the strong, it is the stumbling-block of the uncertain.

If I think, I am lost.

If I were called upon to define briefly the word Art, I should call it the reproduction of what the senses preceive in nature, seen through the veil of the soul.

I have nothing to hide in art. The initial force alone can bring anyone to the end he must attain.

I have to keep working, not to arrive at finish, which arouses the admiration of fools... I must seek completion only for the pleasure of being truer and more knowing.

I lack the magnificent richness of color that animates nature.

I'll always be grateful to the public of intelligent amateurs.

I must be more sensible and realize that at my age, illusions are hardly permitted and they will always destroy me.

In order to make progress, there is only nature, and the eye is turned through contact with her.

I paint as if I were Rothschild.

Is art really the priesthood that demands the pure in heart who belong to it wholly?

I should have wished to possess the intellectual equilibrium that characterizes you and permits you to achieve without fail the desired end... Chance has not favoured me with an equal self-assurance, it is the only regret I have about things of this earth.

Is it the factitious and the conventional that most surely succeed on earth and in the course of life?

It is necessary to introduce light vibrations, represented by reds and yellows, and a sufficient amount of blues, to obtain an airy feeling.

It is not about painting life, it is about making painting alive.