Auguste Rodin Quotes

In short, Beauty is everywhere. It is not that she is lacking to our eye, but our eyes which fail to perceive her. Beauty is character and expression. Well, there is nothing in nature which has more character than the human body. In its strength and its grace it evokes the most varied images. One moment it resembles a flower: the bending torso is the stalk; the breasts, the head, and the splendor of the hair answer to the blossoming of the corolla. The next moment it recalls the pliant creeper, or the proud and upright sapling.

The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live. Be a man before being an artist!

Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.

Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which nature herself is animated.

The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation.

The more simple we are, the more complete we become.

The artist is the confidant of nature, flowers carry on dialogues with him through the graceful bending of their stems and the harmoniously tinted nuances of their blossoms, Every flower has a cordial word which nature directs towards him.

The work of art is already within the block of marble. I just chop off whatever isn't needed.

Patience is also a form of action.

Love your calling with passion, it is the meaning of your life.

Where shall we begin? There is no beginning. Start where you arrive. Stop before what entices you. And work! You will enter little by little into the entirety. Method will be born in proportion to your interest.

The human body is first and foremost a mirror to the soul and its greatest beauty comes from that.

Art is the pleasure of a spirit that enters nature and discovers that it too has a soul.

The artist enriches the soul of humanity. The artist delights people with a thousand different shades of feeling.

There are unknown forces in nature; when we give ourselves wholly to her, without reserve, she lends them to us; she shows us these forms, which our watching eyes do not see, which our intelligence does not understand or suspect.

It is the artist who is truthful and it is photography which lies, for in reality time does not stop

I invent nothing, I rediscover.

If the artist only reproduces superficial features as photography does, if he copies the lineaments of a face exactly, without reference to character, he deserves no admiration. The resemblance which he ought to obtain is that of the soul.

An artist worthy of the name should express all the truth of nature, not only the exterior truth, but also, and above all, the inner truth.

You must always work.

The only principle in art is to copy what you see. Dealers in aesthetics to the contrary, every other method is fatal.

People say I think too much about women, yet, after all what is there more important to think about?

I know very well that one must fight, for one is often in contradiction to the spirit of the age.

The sculptor represents the transition from one pose to another he indicates how insensibly the first glides into the second. In his work we still see a part of what was and we discover a part of what is to be.

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need.

I am like a moon that shines on an immense, unknown sea where ships never pass

Sculpture is the art of the hole and the lump.

To any artist, worthy of the name, all in nature is beautiful, because his eyes, fearlessly accepting all exterior truth, read there, as in an open book, all the inner truth.

I would have to talk for a year to repeat a single on of my works with words.

To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature

True artists are almost the only men who do their work for pleasure.

What is commonly called ugliness in nature can in art become full of beauty.

He who is discouraged after a failure is not a real artist.

Man's naked form belongs to no particular moment in history; it is eternal, and can be looked upon with joy by the people of all ages.

Where did I learn to understand sculpture? In the woods by looking at the trees, along roads by observing the formation of clouds, in the studio by studying the model, everywhere except in the schools.

There should be no argument in regard to morality in art. There is no morality in nature.

The realities of nature surpass our most ambitious dreams.

The body always expresses the spirit whose envelope it is. And for him who can see, the nude offers the richest meaning.

A mediocre man copying nature will never produce a work of art, because he really looks without seeing, and though he may have noted each detail minutely, the result will be flat and without character... the artist on the contrary, sees; that is to say, his eye, grafted on his heart, reads deeply into the bosom of nature.

The nude alone is well dressed

Nobody does good to men with impunity.

I grant you that the artist does not see Nature as she appears to the vulgar, because his emotion reveals to him the hidden truths beneath appearances.

I have unbounded admiration for the nude. I worship it like a god.

As paradoxical as it may seem a great sculptor is as much a colourist as the best painter, or rather the best engraver. He plays so skillfully with all the resources of relief, he blends so well the boldness of light with the modesty of shadow, that his sculptures please one, as much as the most charming etchings.

In front of the model I work with the same will to reproduce truth as if I were making a portrait. I do not correct nature, I incorporate myself into it; it directs me. I can only work with a model. The sight of human forms nourishes and comforts me.

In art, immorality cannot exist. Art is always sacred.

There is a continual exchange of ideas between all minds of a generation. Journalists, popular novelists, illustrators, and cartoonists adapt the truths discovered by the powerful intellects for the multitude. It is like a spiritual flood, like a gush that pours into multiple cascades until it forms the great moving sheet of water that stands for the mentality of a period.

The modes of expression of men of genius differ as much as their souls, and it is impossible to say that in some among them, drawing and color are better or worse than in others.

My drawings are the result of my sculpture.

If the artist succeeds in producing the impression of a movement which takes several moments for accomplishment, his work is certainly much less conventional than the scientific image, where time is abruptly suspended.