Claude Monet Quotes
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My rejection at the Salon brought an end to my hesitation [to settle in Paris] since after this failure I can no longer claim to cope... alas, that fatal rejection has virtually taken the bread out of my mouth.
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I know well enough in advance that you'll find my paintings perfect. I know that if they are exhibited they'll be a great success, but I couldn't be more indifferent to it since I know they are bad, I'm certain of it.
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I've always refused requests even from friends to employ a technique I know nothing about.
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My eyes were finally opened and I understood nature. I learned at the same time to love it.
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I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.
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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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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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One day Boudin said to me, 'Learn to draw well and appreciate the sea, the light, the blue sky.' I took his advice.
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Critic asks: 'And what, sir, is the subject matter of that painting?' - 'The subject matter, my dear good fellow, is the light.
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A good impression is lost so quickly.
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When it is dark, it seems to me as if I were dying, and I can't think any more.
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Now, more than ever, I realize just how illusory my undeserved success has been. I still hold out some hope of doing better, but age and unhappiness have sapped my strength.
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One can do something if one can see and understand it.
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I am enslaved to my work, always wanting the impossible, and never, I believe, have I been less favoured by the endlessly changeable weather.
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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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No, I'm not a great painter. Neither am I a great poet.
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I intend to do a large painting of the cliff at Etretat, although it is terribly bold of me to do so after Courbet has painted it so admirably, but I will try to do it in a different way.
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I know that to paint the sea really well, you need to look at it every hour of every day in the same place so that you can understand its way in that particular spot; and that is why I am working on the same motifs over and over again, four or six times even.
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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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For almost two months now I've been struggling away with no result.
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I've only myself to blame for it, my impotence most of all and my weakness. If I do any good work now it will be only by chance.
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I am good at only two things, and those are gardening and painting.
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What could be said about me...a man to whom only his painting matters? And of course his garden and his flowers as well.
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While adding the finishing touches to a painting might appear insignificant, it is much harder to do than one might suppose.