Henri Rousseau Quotes
We are the two great painters of this era; you are in the Egyptian style, I in themodern style. (to Pablo Picasso)
Quotes to Explore
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Painters should shut up and paint and when we stop painting we should dance or have sex or get a massage or take a shower and we shouldn't be talking about painting.
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When painters feel the need to make a shift toward self-discovery, they turn to black and white for a time.
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As for borrowing Mr. Whistler's ideas about art, the only thoroughly original ideas I have heard him express have had reference to his own superiority as a painter over painters greater than himself.
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Now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion.
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Painters are not in any way unsociable through pride, but either because they find few pursuits equal to painting, or in order not to corrupt themselves with the useless conversation of idle people, and debase the intellect from the lofty imaginations in which they are always absorbed.
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Poets and painters have the power to dare, I mean to dare to do whatever they may approve of.
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Titian, Rembrandt and Goya were the great painters. I am only a public clown.
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There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun.
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What a trade! Poor painters! They always wish to be understood, and they are analysed instead.
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Impressionism is only direct sensation. All great painters were less or more impressionists. It is mainly a question of instinct, and much simpler than [John Singer] Sargent thinks.
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The best painters, as they progress in reputation and towards perfection, are found to dispense more and more with the technique of the art, for simpler methods. Simplicity never fails to charm.
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Maybe I was a little jealous or envious of the abstract painters - but the truth was I thought what they were doing was boring.
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I like to compare my method with that of painters centuries ago, proceeding from layer to layer.
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Many contemporary painters feel that their landscapes come from within and are brought to the surface and given form as a result of various stimuli. The artist's internal world is waiting to be evoked by whatever means the artist finds most productive, and... this world is just as important as the outer, visible world.
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If painters left nothing of themselves after their deaths, so that we were obliged to rank them as we do actors according to the judgment of their contemporaries, how different their reputations would be from what posterity has made them!
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In the matter of physics, the first lessons should contain nothing but what is experimental and interesting to see. A pretty experiment is in itself often more valuable than twenty formulae extracted from our minds.
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I thought I had to be perfect. I would often make choices I thought would make everyone else happy. I lived at a pace that was "good for my career," whether it was good for me or not. I have learned how important it is to check in with myself and listen, really listen.
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Better know nothing than half-know many things.
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Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm, A sylvan scene, and as the ranks ascend Shade above shade, a woody theatre Of stateliest view.
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What if she figures out you're not very smart?
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Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.
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The secret of literature, which conventional people don't guess, is that writers are forever looking for the surprising revelation - not for reinforcement of collective wisdom.
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We are the two great painters of this era; you are in the Egyptian style, I in themodern style. (to Pablo Picasso)
