Henri Rousseau Quotes

When I go out into the countryside and see the sun and the green and everything flowering, I say to myself "Yes indeed, all that belongs to me!"

Nothing makes me so happy as to observe nature and to paint what I see.

The universe was born restless and has never since been still.

I felt before I thought

God created man in his own image. And man, being a gentleman, returned the favor.

I have always believed that good is only beauty put into practice.

It is often said that my heart is too open for my own good.

We are the two great painters of this era; you are in the Egyptian style, I in themodern style. (to Pablo Picasso)

Cities are the sinks of the human race.

The landscapist lives in silence.

The interest and the feelings are not due to colors; the lines of a painting that move us move us even more in a print.

It is not the criminal things which are hardest to confess, but the ridiculous and shameful.

The first man to fence in a piece of land, saying "this is mine" and who found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.

The more humanity owes the poor man, the more society denies him.

Luxury... corrupts at once rich and poor, the rich by possession and the poor by covetousness.

Nature's instructions are always slow; those of men are generally premature.

It is not I that am drawing, it is this thing at the end of my hand.

Hatred as well as love, renders its votaries credulous.

Politeness requires this thing; decorum that; ceremony has its forms, and fashion its laws, and these must always follow, never the promptings of our own nature.

I cannot now change my style, which I acquired, as you can imagine, by dint of labour.

The principal problem I had during the five years I ran the Caisse - and I bet you that it will be the same problem for my successor - is the retention, recruitment and training of competent personnel.

Little privations are easily endured when the heart is better treated than the body.

From the first moment of life, men ought to begin learning to deserve to live.

If it is reason that forms man then it is the emotions that guide her.

The passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct.

The severity of penalties is only a vain resource, invented by little minds in order to substitute terror for that respect which they have no means of obtaining.

The happiest is he who suffers the least pain; the most miserable, he who enjoys the least pleasure.

If a king tries to start a war, a mother should go to him and forbid it.