"I never think I have finished a nude until I think I could pinch it."
"It's with my brush I make love."
"Every year I send in two portraits, however small. The entry is entirely of a commerical nature. Anyway, it's like some medicine - if it does you no good, it will do you no harm. "
- on the Salon
"It is in the museum that one must learn to paint. One must make the paintings of one's own time, but it is there in the museum that one develops the taste for painting, which nature alone cannot provide."
"Education is the downfall of the working classes."
"I never think I have finished a nude until I think I could pinch it."
"Why shouldn't art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world."
"I want to paint stunning pictures that you can sell for very high prices."
- to art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel
"The artist who uses the least of what is called imagination will be the greatest."
- to his son Jean
"I had wrung Impressionism dry, and I finally came to the conclusion that I knew neither how to paint nor how to draw. In a word, Impressionism was a blind alley, as far as I was concerned."
"If a painter works directly from nature, he ultimately looks for nothing but momentary effects; he does not try to compose, and soon he gets monotonous."
"As a result of seeing the out-of-doors, I have ended up by not bothering anymore with the small details that extinguish rather than kindle the sun."
"If the professional schools should succeed in producing skilled workers trained in the technique of their craft, nothing could be done with them if they had no ideal. "
"The ideas come afterwards, when the picture is finished."
"The artist who uses the least of what is called imagination will be the greatest. "
"About 1883 something like a break occurred in my work. I had reached the end of "impressionism", and I had come to realize that I did not know how to paint or draw. "
"I arrange my subject as I want it, then I go ahead and paint it, like a child."
"I have a predilection for painting that lends joyousness to a wall."
"Paint with joy-with the same joy that you would make love to a woman."
"I need to feel the excitement of life stirring around me, and I will always need to feel that."
