Claude Monet Quotes
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The Thames was all gold. God it was beautiful, so fine that I began working a frenzy, following the sun and its reflections on the water.
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I must have flowers, always, and always.
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My life has been nothing but a failure.
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Every day I discover more and more beautiful things. It’s enough to drive one mad. I have such a desire to do everything, my head is bursting with it.
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I'm working hard with more determination than ever. My success at the Salon led to my selling several paintings and since your absence I have made 800 francs; I hope, when I have contracts with more dealers, it will be better still.
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No one but myself knows the anxiety I go through and the trouble I give myself to finish paintings which do not satisfy me and seem to please so very few others.
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No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition.
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Never, even as a child, would I bend to a rule.
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One's better off alone, and yet there are so many things that are impossible to fathom on one's own. In fact it's a terrible business and the task is a hard one.
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It really is appallingly difficult to do something which is complete in every respect, and I think most people are content with mere approximations. Well, my dear friend, I intend to battle on, scrape off and start again.
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If only the weather would improve, there'd be hope of some work, but every day brings rain.
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What is it that's taken hold of me, for me to carry on like this in relentless pursuit of something beyond my powers?
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My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.
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It would be asking too much to want to sell only to connoisseurs - that way starvation lies.
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Manet wanted one day to paint my wife and children. Renoir was there. He took a canvas and began painting them, too. After a while, Manet took me aside and whispered, 'You're on very good terms with Renoir and take an interest in his future - do advise him to give up painting! You can see for yourself that it's not his metier at all.
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My heart is forever in Giverny.
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For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life - the light and the air which vary continually. For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value.
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I would love to do orange and lemon trees silhouetted against the blue sea, but I cannot find them the way I want them.
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Perhaps it's true that I'm very hard on myself, but that's better than exhibiting mediocre work... too few were satisfactory enough to trouble the public with.
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Light is the most important person in the picture.
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To have gone to all this trouble to get to this is just too stupid! Outside there's brilliant sunshine but I don't feel up to looking at it.
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Gardening was something I learned in my youth when I was unhappy. I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.
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I'm very happy, very delighted. I'm setting to like a fighting cockerel, for I'm surrounded here by all that I love.
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Apart from painting and gardening, I'm not good at anything.