Edgar Degas Quotes

Drawing is not what you see but what you must make others see.

A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people.

You must aim high, not in what you are going to do at some future date, but in what you are going to make yourself do to-day. Otherwise, working is just a waste of time.

Conversation in real life is full of half-finished sentences and overlapping talk. Why shouldn't painting be too?

Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do.

The true traveler never arrives.

He once said that he wished to be famous, but unknown.

Everyone has talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it at fifty.

No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters.

It is all very well to copy what one sees, but it is far better to draw what one now only sees in one's memory. That is a transformation in which imagination collaborates with memory.

If I could have had my own way, I would have confined myself to black and white.

The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he has to make others see.

Make a drawing. Start it all over again, trace it. Start it and trace it again.

It seems to me that today, if the artist wishes to be serious - to cut out a little original niche for himself, or at least preserve his own innocence of personality - he must once more sink himself in solitude. There is too much talk and gossip; pictures are apparently made, like stock-market prices, by competition of people eager for profit; in order to do anything at all we need (so to speak) the wit and ideas of our neighbors as much as the businessmen need the funds of others to win on the market. All this traffic sharpens our intelligence and falsifies our judgment.

You have to have a high conception, not of what you are doing, but of what you may do one day: without that, there's no point in working.

Muses work all day long and then at night get together and dance.

Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.

And even this heart of mine has something artificial. The dancers have sewn it into a bag of pink satin, pink satin slightly faded, like their dancing shoes.

Great patience is called for on the hard path that I have entered on.

Hitherto the nude has always been represented in poses which presuppose an audience. But my women are simple, honest creatures who are concerned with nothing beyond their physical occupations... it is as if you were looking through a keyhole.

For those who don't know what they are doing, painting is easy. For those who do know what they are doing, painting is difficult.

If painting weren't so difficult, it wouldn't be fun.

Daylight is too easy. What I want is difficult - the atmosphere of lamps and moonlight.

My art, what do you want to say about it? Do you think you can explain the merits of a picture to those who do not see them? . . . I can find the best and clearest words to explain my meaning, and I have spoken to the most intelligent people about art, and they have not understood; but among people who understand, words are not necessary, you say humph, he, ha and everything has been said.

Drawing is not the same as form, it is a way of seeing form.

Truth is never ugly when one can find in it what one needs.

Art' is the same word as 'artifice,' that is to say, something deceitful. It must succeed in giving the impression of nature by false means.

The frame is the pimp of painting; it enhances it, but it must never shine at the painting's expense.

It is people's movement that consoles us. If the leaves of a tree did not move, how sad would be the tree - and so should we.

C'est vrai. Voilá quelqu'un qui sent comme moi. (It is true. There is someone who feels as I do).

Taste! It doesn't exist. An artist makes beautiful things without being aware of it.

One must do the same subject over again ten times, a hundred times. In art nothing must resemble an accident, not even movement.

Drawing is the artist's most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality.

Art is vice. One does not wed it, one rapes it.

The Dance instills in you something that sets you apart. Something heroic and remote.

One must have a high opinion of a work of art - not the work one is creating at the moment, but of that which one desires to achieve one day. Without this it is not worthwhile working.

We were created to look at one another, weren't we?

Work a great deal at evening effects, lamplight, candlelight, etc. The intriguing thing is not to show the source of the light but the effect of the lighting.

What a horrible thing yellow is.

A picture is an artificial work, outside nature. It calls for as much cunning as the commission of a crime.

I feel as a horse must feel when the beautiful cup is given to the jockey.

A picture is first of all a product of the artist's imagination, it must never be a copy.

There is love, and there is work; and we have only one heart.

The museums are here to teach the history of art and something more as well, for, if they stimulate in the weak a desire to imitate, they furnish the strong with the means of their emancipation.

A man is an artist only at certain moments, by an effort of will. Objects have the same appearance for everybody.

So that's the telephone? They ring, and you run.

Realism is more important than the sentiment of the picture.

Only two of my personalities are schizophrenic, but one of them is paranoid and the other one is out to get him. Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.

What use is my mind? Granted that it enables me to hail a bus and to pay my fare. But once I am inside my studio, what use is my mind? I have my model, my pencil, my paints. My mind doesn't interest me.

Your pictures would have been finished a long time ago if I were not forced every day to do something to earn money.