Edgar Degas
Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Imagination
Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do.Collection: Art
What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming.
Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.
Everyone has talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it at fifty.
One must do the same subject over again ten times, a hundred times. In art nothing must resemble an accident, not even movement.
In painting you must give the idea of the true by means of the false.
No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters.
The fascinating thing, is not to show the source of light, but the effect of light.Collection: Light
Drawing is not what you see but what you must make others see.Collection: Beauty
A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people.Collection: Art
The true traveler never arrives.Collection: Traveler
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.Collection: Artist
Conversation in real life is full of half-finished sentences and overlapping talk. Why shouldn't painting be too?Collection: Real
I'm glad I haven't found my style yet. I'd be bored to death.Collection: Bored
If painting weren't so difficult, it wouldn't be fun.Collection: Fun
An artist must approach his work in the spirit of the criminal about to commit a crime.Collection: Artist
People call me the painter of dancing girls. It has never occurred to them that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering movement and painting pretty clothes.Collection: Girl
The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he has to make others see.Collection: Art
We were created to look at one another, weren't we?Collection: Artist
There is love, and there is work; and we have only one heart.Collection: Heart
Truth is never ugly when one can find in it what one needs.Collection: Truth
C'est vrai. Voilá quelqu'un qui sent comme moi. (It is true. There is someone who feels as I do).Collection: Feels
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.Collection: Moving
Muses work all day long and then at night get together and dance.Collection: Night
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.Collection: Art
The frame is the reward of the artist.Collection: Artist
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.Collection: One Day
I feel as a horse must feel when the beautiful cup is given to the jockey.Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Imagination
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.Collection: Art
One does not marry art. One ravishes it.Collection: Inspirational
I should like to be famous and unknown.Collection: Artist
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.Collection: Cutting
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.Collection: Beauty
He once said that he wished to be famous, but unknown.Collection: Want
If I could have had my own way, I would have confined myself to black and white.Collection: Black And White
Make a drawing. Start it all over again, trace it. Start it and trace it again.Collection: Drawing
Drawing is not the same as form, it is a way of seeing form.Collection: Drawing
A man is an artist only at certain moments, by an effort of will. Objects have the same appearance for everybody.Collection: Artist
It seems to me that today if the artist wishes to be serious... he must once more sink himself in solitude.Collection: Artist
Drawing is the artist's most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality.Collection: Writing
Great patience is called for on the hard path that I have entered on.Collection: Patience
A picture is first of all a product of the artist's imagination, it must never be a copy.Collection: Artist
The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he must make others see. Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things. A picture is first of all a product of the imagination of the artist; it must never be a copy. If then two or three natural accents can be added, obviously no harm is done. The air we see in the paintings of the old masters is never the air we breathe.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Two
There is no such thing as Intelligence; one has intelligence of this or that. One must have intelligence only for what one is doing.Collection: Intelligence
Instantaneity is photography.Collection: Photography