Auguste Rodin
Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.Collection: Time
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.Collection: Nature
I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need.Collection: Art
Sculpture is the art of the hole and the lump.Collection: Art
To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature.Collection: Nature
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.Collection: Intelligence
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.Collection: Art
I invent nothing, I rediscover.
Inside you there's an artist you don't know about. He's not interested in how things look different in moonlight.
True artists are almost the only men who do their work for pleasure.
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.
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.
Nobody does good to men with impunity.
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.
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.
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.Collection: Flower
The human body is first and foremost a mirror to the soul and its greatest beauty comes from that.Collection: Photography
The more simple we are, the more complete we become.Collection: Simple
The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live. Be a man before being an artist!Collection: Artist
The work of art is already within the block of marble. I just chop off whatever isn't needed.Collection: Art
Love your calling with passion, it is the meaning of your life.Collection: Love
Patience is also a form of action.Collection: Patience
Art is the pleasure of a spirit that enters nature and discovers that it too has a soul.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Work
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.Collection: School
There is nothing ugly in art except that which is without character, that is to say, that which offers no outer or inner truth.Collection: Art
People say I think too much about women, yet, after all what is there more important to think about?Collection: Thinking
One must work, nothing but work, and one must have patience.Collection: Having Patience
There is no need to create. Genius comes only to those who know how to use their eyes and their intelligence.Collection: Eye
Man enjoys living on the edge of his dreams and neglects the real things of the world which are so beautiful. The ignorant and indifferent destroy beautiful things merely by looking at the marble. Things that remake the soul of him who understands them.Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Photography
The nude alone is well dressedCollection: Well Dressed
To the artist there is never anything ugly in natureCollection: Inspirational
I have unbounded admiration for the nude. I worship it like a god.Collection: Beauty
Black is the queen of colours.Collection: Queens
How painful it is to find that my figure can be of no help to my future... how painful to see it rejected on account of a slanderous suspicion!Collection: Rejection
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.Collection: Spiritual
The artist has only to trust his eyes.Collection: Eye
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.Collection: Artist
Recently I have taken to isolating limbs, the torso. Why am I blamed for it? Why is the head allowed and not portions of the body? Every part of the human figure is expressive.Collection: Taken
If we now seek the spiritual significance of the technique of Michelangelo we shall find that his sculpture expressed restless energy.Collection: Spiritual
My drawings are the result of my sculpture.Collection: Drawing
I believe that photography can create great works of art, but hitherto it has been extraordinarily bourgeois and babbling. (1908)Collection: Photography
Even with all the documents, you can never forge natureCollection: Documents
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.Collection: Light
There should be no argument in regard to morality in art. There is no morality in nature.Collection: Art
I am like a moon that shines on an immense, unknown sea where ships never passCollection: Moon
He who is discouraged after a failure is not a real artist.Collection: Real
Mystery is like a kind of atmosphere which bathes the greatest works of the masters.Collection: Atmosphere