I have sworn to die painting.
— Paul Cezanne
I am a pupil of Pissarro.
Is it the factitious and the conventional that most surely succeed on earth and in the course of life?
We must not be content to memorize the beautiful formulas of our illustrious predecessors. Let us go out and study beautiful nature.
One does not substitute oneself for the past, one merely adds to it a new link.
I allow no one to touch me.
Is art really the priesthood that demands the pure in heart who belong to it wholly?
A thousand painters ought to be killed yearly. Say what you like: I'm every inch a painter.
Tell me, do you think I'm going mad? I sometimes wonder, you know.
The world doesn't understand me and I don't understand the world, that's why I've withdrawn from it.
Two sittings a day of my models and I'm totally exhausted.
I am more a friend of art than a producer of painting.
Painting is damned difficult - you always think you've got it, but you haven't.
Genius is the ability to renew one's emotions in daily experience.
Shadow is a colour as light is, but less brilliant; light and shadow are only the relation of two tones.
Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one's sensations.
With an apple I will astonish Paris.
I am the primitive of the method I have invented.
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.
My nervous system is enfeebled, only work in oils can sustain me.
Optics, developing in us through study, teach us to see.
I'll always be grateful to the public of intelligent amateurs.
The truth is in nature, and I shall prove it.
I have nothing to hide in art. The initial force alone can bring anyone to the end he must attain.
You say a new era in art is preparing; you sensed it coming; continue your studies without weakening. God will do the rest.
The clear French landscape is as pure as a verse of Racine.
It is impossible for emotion not to come on us in thinking of that time now flowed away.
Art is a harmony parallel with nature.
I want to die painting.
Doubtless there are things in nature which have not yet been seen. If an artist discovers them, he opens the way for his successors.
The most seductive thing about art is the personality of the artist himself.
An art which isn't based on feeling isn't an art at all.
The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.
I paint as if I were Rothschild.
Don't be an art critic. Paint. There lies salvation.
I lack the magnificent richness of color that animates nature.
I've come to the conclusion that it's not really possible to help others.
With a painter's temperament, all that's needed are the means of expression sufficient to be intelligible to the wide public.
My age and health will never allow me to realize the dream of art I've been pursuing all my life.
Keep good company - that is, go to the Louvre.
A puny body weakens the soul.
If isolation tempers the strong, it is the stumbling-block of the uncertain.
People think how a sugar basin has no physiognomy, no soul. But it changes every day.
I ask you to pray for me, for once age has overtaken us, we find consolation only in religion.
I must be more sensible and realize that at my age, illusions are hardly permitted and they will always destroy me.
I could paint for a hundred years, a thousand years without stopping and I would still feel as though I knew nothing.
The artist makes things concrete and gives them individuality.
The painter must enclose himself within his work; he must respond not with words, but with paintings.
It's so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas.
For an Impressionist to paint from nature is not to paint the subject, but to realize sensations.
