Best 144 quotes of Claude Monet on MyQuotes

A good impression is lost so quickly.

All I did was to look at what the universe showed me, to let my brush bear witness to it.

Apart from painting and gardening, I'm not good at anything.

As for myself, I met with as much success as I ever could have wanted. In other words, I was enthusiastically run-down by every critic of the period.

By the single example of this painter devoted to his art with such independence, my destiny as a painter opened out to me.

Canvases between 8 centimetres and 1 metre are priced around 25,000 francs. In the past I used to sell them from between 50 to 100 francs at the most. I have to say... that I feel somewhat embarrassed at this admission.

Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.

Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment. To such an extent indeed that one day, finding myself at the deathbed of a woman who had been and still was very dear to me, I caught myself in the act of focusing on her temples and automatically analyzing the succession of appropriately graded colors which death was imposing on her motionless face.

Colors pursue me like a constant worry. They even worry me in my sleep.

Critic asks: 'And what, sir, is the subject matter of that painting?' - 'The subject matter, my dear good fellow, is the light.

Despite my extremely modest prices, dealers and art lovers are turning their backs on me. It is very depressing to see the lack of interest shown in an art object which has no market value.

Despite my exhaustion I have a devil of a time getting to sleep because of the rats above my bed and a pig who lives beneath my room.

Every day I discover more and more beautiful things. It’s enough to drive one mad. I have such a desire to do everything, my head is bursting with it.

Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.

Everything changes, even stone.

For almost two months now I've been struggling away with no result.

For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at any moment.

For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life - the light and the air which vary continually. For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value.

For me, the subject is of secondary importance: I want to convey what is alive between me and the subject.

Gardening was something I learned in my youth when I was unhappy. I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

I am enslaved to my work, always wanting the impossible, and never, I believe, have I been less favoured by the endlessly changeable weather.

I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

I am good at only two things, and those are gardening and painting.

I am pleased with the exhibition... everything on display was sold for a good price to decent people. It has been a long time since I believed that you could educate public taste.

I am very depressed and deeply disgusted with painting. It is really a continual torture.

I can no longer work outside because of the intensity of the light.

I despise the opinion of the press and the so-called critics.

I didn't become an impressionist. As long as I can remember I always have been one.

I do have a dream, a tableau of the bathing place of La Grenouillère, for which I've done some bad pochades (sketches), but it is a dream. Renoir, who have just spent a couple of months here, also wants to paint this subject.

I do what I can to convey what I experience before nature and most often, in order to succeed in conveying what I feel, I totally forget the most elementary rules of painting, if they exist that is.

If only the weather would improve, there'd be hope of some work, but every day brings rain.

If the world really looks like that I will paint no more!

I get madder and madder on giving back what I feel.

I had so much fire in me and so many plans.

I have made tremendous efforts to work in a darker register and express the sinister and tragic quality of the place, given my natural tendency to work in light and pale tones.

I haven't many years left ahead of me and I must devote all my time to painting, in the hope of achieving something worthwhile in the end, something if possible that will satisfy me.

I haven't yet managed to capture the colour of this landscape; there are moments when I'm appalled at the colours I'm having to use, I'm afraid what I'm doing is just dreadful and yet I really am understating it; the light is simply terrifying.

I have once more taken up things that can't be done: water with grasses weaving on the bottom. But I'm always tackling that sort of thing!

I intend to do a large painting of the cliff at Etretat, although it is terribly bold of me to do so after Courbet has painted it so admirably, but I will try to do it in a different way.

I know that to paint the sea really well, you need to look at it every hour of every day in the same place so that you can understand its way in that particular spot; and that is why I am working on the same motifs over and over again, four or six times even.

I know well enough in advance that you'll find my paintings perfect. I know that if they are exhibited they'll be a great success, but I couldn't be more indifferent to it since I know they are bad, I'm certain of it.

I let a good many mistakes show through when fixing my sensations. It will always be the same and this is what makes me despair.

I'm continuing to work hard, not without periods of discouragement, but my strength comes back again.

I'm enjoying the most perfect tranquillity, free from all worries, and in consequence would like to stay this way forever, in a peaceful corner of the countryside like this.

I'm getting so slow at my work it makes me despair, but... I'm increasingly obsessed by the need to render what I experience, and I'm praying that I'll have a few more good years left to me.

I'm going to get down to a still life on a size 50 canvas of rayfish and dogfish with old fishermen's baskets. Then I'm going to turn out a few pictures to send wherever possible, given that now, first and foremost - unfortunately - I have to earn some money.

I'm in a foul mood as I'm making stupid mistakes... This morning I lost beyond repair a painting with which I had been happy, having done about twenty sessions on it; it had to be thoroughly scraped away... what a rage I was in!

I'm in fine fettle and fired with a desire to paint.

I'm knocked out, I've never felt so physically and mentally exhausted, I'm quite stupid with it and long only for bed; but I am happy.

I'm never finished with my paintings; the further I get, the more I seek the impossible and the more powerless I feel.