Top 135 Quotes & Sayings by Paul Gauguin - Page 2

However depressed I may be I am not in the habit of giving up a project without having tried everything, even the 'impossible', to gain my end.

Thanks to our cinctures and corsets we have succeeded in making an artificial being out of woman. She is an anomaly, and Nature herself, obedient to the laws of heredity, aids us in complicating and enervating her. We carefully keep her in a state of nervous weakness and muscular inferiority, and in guarding her from fatigue, we take away from her possibilities of development. Thus modeled on a bizarre ideal of slenderness to which, strangely enough, we continue to adhere, our women have nothing in common with us, and this, perhaps, may not be without grave moral and social disadvantages.

If I did what has already been done, I would be a plagiarist and would consider myself unworthy; so I do something different and people call me a scoundrel. I'd rather be a scoundrel than a plagiarist!

Literary poetry in a painter is something special, and is neither illustration nor the translation of writing by form.

Many people say that I don't know how to draw because I don't draw particular forms. When will they understand that execution, drawing and color (in other words, style) must be in harmony with the poem?

The great artist is a formulation of the greatest intelligence: he is the recipient of sensations which are the most delicate and consequently the most invisible expressions of the brain.

Happiness and work rose up together with the sun, radiant like it.

Today one can dare anything, and, furthermore, nobody is surprised.

Under the continual contact with the pebbles my feet have become hardened and used to the ground. My body, almost constantly nude, no longer suffers from the sun. Civilization is falling from me little by little. I am beginning to think simply, to feel only very little hatred for my neighbor - rather, to love him.

A nude by Degas is chaste. But his women wash in tubs!

A meter of green is greener than a centimeter.

Civilization is paralysis.

One's state of mind is three-quarters of what counts, so it has to be carefully nurtured if you want to do something great and lasting.

No one wants my painting because it is different from other people's peculiar, crazy public that demands the greatest possible degree of originality on the painter's part and yet won't accept him unless his work resembles that of the others!

Beware of luxury! Beware of acquiring the taste and need for it, under the pretext of providing for the morrow.

There are tonalities which are noble and others which are vulgar, harmonies which are calm or consoling, and others which are exciting because of their boldness.

Life is merely a fraction of a second. An infinitely small amount of time to fulfill our desires, our dreams, our passions.

for Christ's sake, were the mountains blue, then chuck on some blue and don't go telling me that it was a blue a bit like this or like that, it was blue wasn't it? Good - make them blue and that's enough!

All the joys - animal and human - of a free life are mine. I have escaped everything that is artificial, conventional, customary.

I must confess that I too am a woman and that I am always prepared to applaud a woman who is more daring than I, and is equal to a man in fighting for freedom of behavior.

When the physical organism breaks up, the soul survives. It then takes on another body.

Soon I'll be old and I've done precious little in this world for lack of time. I am always afraid I'll become senile before I've finished what I've undertaken.

What still concerns me the most is: am I on the right track, am I making progress, am I making mistakes in art?

Do you know what will soon be the ultimate in truth? - photography, once it begins to reproduce colors, and that won't be long in coming. And yet you want an intelligent man to sweat for months so as to give the illusion he can do something as well as an ingenious little machine can!

A bit of advice, don't copy nature too closely. Art is an abstraction; as you dream amid nature, extrapolate art from it, and concentrate on what you will create as a result.

Having the certitude of a succession of days... equally free and beautiful, peace descends on me.

You may dream freely when you listen to music as well as when you look at painting. When you read a book you are the slave of the author's mind.

The landscape with its violent, pure colours dazzled and blinded me. I was always uncertain.

There is no such thing as exaggerated art. I even believe that there is salvation only in extreme.

The work of a man is the explanation of the man.

A time will come when people will think I am a myth, or rather something the newspapers have made up.

I am entering into the truth, into nature.

Oh mysterious world... I have become better for having understood and having loved thy human soul - a flower which has ceased to bloom and whose fragrance no one henceforth will breathe.

The cyclone ends. The sun returns; the lofty coconut trees lift up their plumes again; man does likewise. The great anguish is over; joy has returned; the sea smiles like a child.

Sometimes people accuse me of being incomprehensible only because they look for an explicative side to my pictures which is not there.

The single most powerful tool for winning a negotiation is the ability to get up and walk away from the table without a deal

A great sentiment can be rendered immediately. Dream on it and look for the simplest form in which you can express it.

It was so simple to paint things as I saw them; to put without special calculation a red close to a blue.

How to re-light the fire the very ashes of which are scattered?

Why work? The gods are there to lavish upon the faithful the good gifts of nature.

In art, there are only two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists. And in the end, doesn't the revolutionary's work become official, once the State takes it over?

Out in the sun, some painters are lined up. The first is copying nature, the second is copying the first, the third is copying the second... You see the sequence.

I sit at my door, smoking a cigarette and sipping my absinthe, and I enjoy every day without a care in the world

Go on working, freely and furiously, you will make progress and sooner or later your worth will be recognised, if you have any.

I am a great artist and I know it, it is because I am that I have been able to endure so much suffering.

It is well for young men to have a model, but let them draw the curtain over it while they are painting.

My God! How terrible these money questions are for an artist!

Nothing so resembles a daub as a masterpiece.

Proficiency in art is a contract with your self and the empowerment of your self. Not all of us demand or even desire proficiency, but for those who do it's necessary to temper the influence of groups. And while some artists think history is bunk, the historical evidence is overwhelming: "In my isolation I grow stronger."

Wherever I go I need a period of incubation so that I may learn the essence of nature, which never wishes to be understood or yield herself.

Silence! I am learning to know the silence of a Tahitian night.

Look closely at the Japanese; they draw admirably and yet in them you will see life outdoors and in the sun without shadows.

In art there are only two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists

A hint - don't paint too much direct from nature. Art is an abstraction! study nature then brood on it and treasure the creation which will result, which is the only way to ascend towards God - to create like our Divine Master.

Beautiful colors exist, though we do not realize it, and are glimpsed behind the veil that modesty has drawn over them.

In art one is concerned with the condition of the spirit for three quarters of the time; one must therefore care for oneself if he wishes to make something great and lasting.

How do you see those tree?... They are yellow. Well then put down yellow. And that shadow is rather blue. So render it with pure ultramarine. Those red leaves? Use vermillion.

There are noble tones, ordinary ones, tranquil harmonies, consoling ones, others which excite by their vigour.

A critic in my house sees some paintings. Greatly perturbed, he asks for my drawings. My drawings? Never! They are my letters, my secrets.

I made a promise to keep a watch over myself, to remain master of myself, so that I might become a sure observer.