Eugene Delacroix Quotes
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Give me some mud, and I will paint you a woman's flesh.
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At a distance this fine oak seems to be of ordinary size. But if I place myself under its branches, the impression changes completely: I see it as big, and even terrifying in its bigness.
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It is often we come the closest to the essence of an artist... in his or her pocket notebooks and travel sketchbooks... where written comments and personal notes provide an intimate insight into the magical mind of a working artist.
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I go to work as others rush to see their mistresses, and when I leave, I take back with me to my solitude, or in the midst of the distractions that I pursue, a charming memory that does not in the least resemble the troubled pleasure of lovers.
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Mythological subjects always new. Modern subjects difficult because of the absence of the nude and the wretchedness of modern costume.
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Do all the work you can; that is the whole philosophy of the good way of life.
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A wife of your own stature is the greatest of all blessings.
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Everyone knows that yellow, orange, and red suggest ideas of joy and plenty. I can paint you the skin of Venus with mud, provided you let me surround it as I will.
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One never paints violently enough.
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The more an object is polished or brilliant, the less you see its own color and the more it becomes a mirror reflecting the color of its surroundings.
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The outcome of my days is always the same; an infinite desire for what one never gets; a void one cannot fill; an utter yearning to produce in all ways, to battle as much as possible against time that drags us along, and the distractions that throw a veil over our soul.
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Can any man say with certainty that he was happy at a particular moment of time which he remembers as being delightful? Remembering it certainly makes him happy, because he realizes how happy he could have been, but at the actual moment when the alleged happiness was occurring, did he really feel happy? He was like a man owning a piece of ground in which, unknown to himself, a treasure lay buried.
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If one considered life as a simple loan, one would perhaps be less exacting. We possess actually nothing; everything goes through us.
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Photography is in some ways false just because it is so exact.
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In every art we are always obliged to return to the accepted means of expression, the conventional language of the art. What is a black-and-white drawing but a convention to which the beholder has become so accustomed that with his mind's eye he sees a complete equivalent in the translation from nature?
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Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who can't attain it in anything.
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There is no merit in being truthful when one is truthful by nature, or rather when one can be nothing else; it is a gift, like poetry or music. But it needs courage to be truthful after carefully considering the matter, unless a kind of pride is involved; for example, the man who says to himself, "I am ugly," and then says, "I am ugly" to his friends, lest they should think themselves the first to make the discovery.
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A taste for simplicity cannot last for long.
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If I haven't fought for my country at least I'll paint for her.
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Not only can color, which is under fixed laws, be taught like music, but it is easier to learn than drawing, whose elaborate principles cannot be taught.
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What moves those of genius, what inspires their work is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.
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The artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing.
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Glory to that Homer of painting, to that father of warmth and enthusiasm... he really paints men.
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I live in company with a body, a silent companion, exacting and eternal. He it is who notes that individuality which is the seal of the weakness of our race. My soul has wings, but the brutal jailer is strict.