Top 29 Quotes & Sayings by Henri Rousseau

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a French artist Henri Rousseau.

Last updated on November 5, 2024.

Henri Julien Félix Rousseau was a French post-impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner. He was also known as Le Douanier, a humorous description of his occupation as a toll and tax collector. He started painting seriously in his early forties; by age 49, he retired from his job to work on his art full-time.

French - Artist | May 21, 1844 - September 2, 1910

Source: Wikipedia

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

Henri Rousseau

Excuse my scribbling, it is late, and I have a poor candle.

Henri Rousseau

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

Henri Rousseau

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

Henri Rousseau

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

Henri Rousseau

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

Henri Rousseau

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

Henri Rousseau

The landscapist lives in silence.

Henri Rousseau

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

Henri Rousseau

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

Henri Rousseau

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.

Henri Rousseau

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

Henri Rousseau

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.

Henri Rousseau

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.

Henri Rousseau

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

Henri Rousseau

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.

Henri Rousseau

Cities are the sinks of the human race.

Henri Rousseau

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.

Henri Rousseau

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

Henri Rousseau

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

Henri Rousseau

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.

Henri Rousseau

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

Henri Rousseau