Henri Rousseau
Nothing makes me so happy as to observe nature and to paint what I see.Collection: Nature
It is often said that my heart is too open for my own good.
If a king tries to start a war, a mother should go to him and forbid it.
I cannot now change my style, which I acquired, as you can imagine, by dint of labour.
Excuse my scribbling, it is late, and I have a poor candle.
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!"Collection: Green
The universe was born restless and has never since been still.Collection: Restless
I felt before I thoughtCollection: Felt
I have always believed that good is only beauty put into practice.Collection: Beauty
God created man in his own image. And man, being a gentleman, returned the favor.Collection: Men
It is not I that am drawing, it is this thing at the end of my hand.Collection: Art
From the first moment of life, men ought to begin learning to deserve to live.Collection: Life
Cities are the sinks of the human race.Collection: Race
The landscapist lives in silence.Collection: Silence
The happiest is he who suffers the least pain; the most miserable, he who enjoys the least pleasure.Collection: Happiness
We are the two great painters of this era; you are in the Egyptian style, I in themodern style. (to Pablo Picasso)Collection: Two
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.Collection: Moving
The more humanity owes the poor man, the more society denies him.Collection: Men
Nature's instructions are always slow; those of men are generally premature.Collection: Nature
If it is reason that forms man then it is the emotions that guide her.Collection: Men
Luxury... corrupts at once rich and poor, the rich by possession and the poor by covetousness.Collection: Luxury
It is not the criminal things which are hardest to confess, but the ridiculous and shameful.Collection: Guilt
Little privations are easily endured when the heart is better treated than the body.Collection: Heart
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.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Leadership
Hatred as well as love, renders its votaries credulous.Collection: Love
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.Collection: Fashion
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.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Respect