Paul Cezanne Quotes

The Louvre is the book in which we learn to read.

Keep good company - that is, go to the Louvre.

Time and reflection change the sight little by little 'till we come to understand.

The Louvre is the book in which we learn to read. We must not, however, be satisfied with retaining the beautiful formulas of our illustrious predecessors. Let us go forth to study beautiful nature, let us try to free our mids from them, let us strive to express ourselves according to our personal temperaments. Time and reflection, moreover, little by little modify our vision, and at last comprehension comes to us.

People think how a sugar basin has no physiognomy, no soul. But it changes every day.

Art is a harmony parallel with nature.

The most seductive thing about art is the personality of the artist himself.

The truth is in nature, and I shall prove it.

Genius is the ability to renew one's emotions in daily experience.

Light is a thing that cannot be reproduced, but must be represented by something else - by color.

The awareness of our own strength makes us modest.

Treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything in proper perspective so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point.

I ask you to pray for me, for once age has overtaken us, we find consolation only in religion.

A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.

Right now a moment of time is passing by!... We must become that moment.

It's so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas.

The Louvre is a good book to consult, but it must only be an intermediary. The real and immense study that must be taken up is the manifold picture of nature.

Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one's sensations.

The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.

May I repeat what I told you here: treat nature by means of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything brought into proper perspective so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point. Lines parallel to the horizon give breadth... lines perpendicular to this horizon give depth. But nature for us men is more depth than surface, whence the need to introduce into our light vibrations, represented by the reds and yellows, a sufficient amount of blueness to give the feel of air.

Sometimes I imagine colors as if they were living ideas, being of pure reason with which to communicate. Nature is not on the surface, it is deep down.

Shadow is a colour as light is, but less brilliant; light and shadow are only the relation of two tones.

We live in a rainbow of chaos.

Under this fine rain I breathe in the innocence of the world. I feel coloured by the nuances of infinity. At this moment I am one with my picture. We are an iridescent chaos.

See how the light tenderly love the apricots, it takes them over completely, enters into their pulp, light them from all sides! But it is miserly with the peaches and light only one side of them.

I could paint for a hundred years, a thousand years without stopping and I would still feel as though I knew nothing.

Long live the sun which gives us such beautiful color.

It took me 40 years to find out that painting is not sculpture.

I'd like to combine melancholy and sunshine... There's a sadness in Provence which no one has expressed... I'd like to put reason in the grass and tears in the sky, like Poussin.

Painting is damned difficult - you always think you've got it, but you haven't.

To paint is not to copy the object slavishly, it is to grasp a harmony among many relationships.

All pictures painted inside in the studio will never be as good as the things done outside.

The landscape becomes human, becomes a thinking, living being within me. I become one with my picture...we merge in an iridescent chaos.

The artist makes things concrete and gives them individuality.

What I am trying to translate to you is more mysterious, it is entwined in the very roots of being, in the implacable source of sensations.

For an Impressionist to paint from nature is not to paint the subject, but to realize sensations.

Fruits ... like having their portrait painted. They seem to sit there and ask your forgiveness for fading. Their thought is given off with their perfumes. They come with all their scents, they speak of the fields they have left, the rain which has nourished them, the daybreaks they have seen.

When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art.

It's not just about looking and copying, it's about feeling too

I want to die painting.

If I think, everything is lost.

Is art really the priesthood that demands the pure in heart who belong to it wholly?

Monet is only an eye, but my God, what an eye!

When the color achieves richness, the form attains its fullness also.

I have to keep working, not to arrive at finish, which arouses the admiration of fools... I must seek completion only for the pleasure of being truer and more knowing.

Tell me, do you think I'm going mad? I sometimes wonder, you know.

Here on the edge of the river, the motifs are very plentiful, the same subject seen from a different angle gives a subject for study of the highest interest and so varied that I think I could be occupied for months without changing my place, simply bending a little more to the right or left.

An art which isn't based on feeling isn't an art at all... feeling is the principle, the beginning and the end; craft, objective, technique - all these are in the middle.

With an apple I will astonish Paris.

Surely, a single bunch of carrots painted naively, just as we personally see it, is worth all the endless banalities of the Schools, all those dreary pictures concocted out of tobacco juice according to time-honored formulas?