Paul Gauguin Quotes
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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.
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It was so simple to paint things as I saw them; to put without special calculation a red close to a blue.
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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?
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Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one's will.
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A great sentiment can be rendered immediately. Dream on it and look for the simplest form in which you can express it.
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We never really know what stupidity is until we have experimented on ourselves.
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Without delay I began work, without hesitation and all of a fever.
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Civilization is what makes you sick.
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A critic in my house sees some paintings. Greatly perturbed, he asks for my drawings. My drawings? Never! They are my letters, my secrets.
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Why work? The gods are there to lavish upon the faithful the good gifts of nature.
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Do you know what will soon be the ultimate in truth? - photography, once it begins to reproduce colors, and that won't be long in coming. And yet you want an intelligent man to sweat for months so as to give the illusion he can do something as well as an ingenious little machine can!
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I have always wanted a mistress who was fat, and I have never found one. To make a fool of me, they are always pregnant.
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There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite.
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My eyes close and uncomprehendingly see the dream in the infinite space that stretches away, elusive, before me.
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How do you see those tree?... They are yellow. Well then put down yellow. And that shadow is rather blue. So render it with pure ultramarine. Those red leaves? Use vermillion.
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In painting one must search rather for suggestion than for description, as is done in music.
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Thanks to our cinctures and corsets we have succeeded in making an artificial being out of woman. She is an anomaly, and Nature herself, obedient to the laws of heredity, aids us in complicating and enervating her. We carefully keep her in a state of nervous weakness and muscular inferiority, and in guarding her from fatigue, we take away from her possibilities of development. Thus modeled on a bizarre ideal of slenderness to which, strangely enough, we continue to adhere, our women have nothing in common with us, and this, perhaps, may not be without grave moral and social disadvantages.
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In order to produce something new, you have to return to the original source, to the childhood of mankind.
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I have come to an unalterable decision - to go and live forever in Polynesia. Then I can end my days in peace and freedom, without thoughts of tomorrow and this eternal struggle against idiots.
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One's state of mind is three-quarters of what counts, so it has to be carefully nurtured if you want to do something great and lasting.
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Art is either revolution or plagiarism
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I plunged eagerly and passionately into the wilderness, as if in the hope of thus penetrating into the very heart of this Nature, powerful and maternal, there to blend with her living elements.
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Let everything about you breathe the calm and peace of the soul.
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A critic is someone who meddles with something that is none of his business.