Paul Cezanne's Quotes

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

It is impossible for emotion not to come on us in thinking of that time now flowed away.

One does not substitute oneself for the past, one merely adds to it a new link.

Optics, developing in us through study, teach us to see.

People think how a sugar basin has no physiognomy, no soul. But it changes every day.

Pure drawing is an abstraction. Drawing and colour are not distinct, everything in nature is coloured.

The artist makes things concrete and gives them individuality.

The clear French landscape is as pure as a verse of Racine.

The painter must enclose himself within his work; he must respond not with words, but with paintings.

We must not be content to memorize the beautiful formulas of our illustrious predecessors. Let us go out and study beautiful nature.

With a painter's temperament, all that's needed are the means of expression sufficient to be intelligible to the wide public.

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

When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art.

The awareness of our own strength makes us modest.

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

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

Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one's sensations.

Painting is damned difficult - you always think you've got it, but you haven't.

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

We live in a rainbow of chaos.

I allow no one to touch me.

There are two things in the painter, the eye and the mind; each of them should aid the other.

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

Art is a harmony parallel with nature.

The most seductive thing about art is the personality of the artist himself.

I've come to the conclusion that it's not really possible to help others.

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

Tell me, do you think I'm going mad? I sometimes wonder, you know.

The truth is in nature, and I shall prove it.

The world doesn't understand me and I don't understand the world, that's why I've withdrawn from it.

With an apple I will astonish Paris.

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

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

It's so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas.

The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.

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.