"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. " - from Noa, Noa: The Tahitian Journal
"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. "
- from Noa, Noa: The Tahitian Journal
 
"Art is either a plagiarist or a revolutionary. "
 
"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 shut my eyes in order to see."
 
"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."
 
"The Impressionists study colour exclusively, but without freedom... For them the ideal landscape, related from many different entities, does not exist. They heed only the eye and neglect the mysterious centres of thought, so falling into merely scientific reasoning. When they speak of their art, what is it? A purely superficial thing, full of affectations and only material. In it, thought does not exist."
 
"Impressionism is an art purely superficial...purely material; imagination does not inhabit it. They heed only the eye, and neglect the mysterious centers of thought."
 
"Painting is the most beautiful of all arts, because in it, all sensations are condensed."
 
"I content myself with searching my inner self and not nature."
 
"Study the silhouette of every object; clarity and outline comes to the hand that is not weakened by a hesitant will."
 
"Drawing, that is all there is."
 
"A man's work is the explanation of that man."
 
"A powerful sensation may be translated with immediacy: dream on it and seek its simplest form."
 
"One piece of advice, don't copy nature too much. Art is an abstraction: derive this abstraction from nature while dreaming before it, but think more of creating than the actual result."
 
"Wishing to suggest a lush, overgrown nature and a tropical sun blazing over it all, I had to give my figures a corresponding setting...Hence all these fabulous colors and this blazing but subdued and silent atmosphere."
 
"Lacking many of the essential implements, it irritated me to be reduced to impotence in the face of artistic projects to which I had passionately given myself. "
 
"With the beautiful instinct of her race she dispersed grace everywhere about her, and made everything she touched a work of art. "
- on Tahitian queen
 
"I'd like to write the way I do my paintings, that is, as fantasy takes me, as the moon dictates."
 
"Look closely at the Japanese; they draw admirably and yet in them you will see life outdoors and in the sun without shadows... "
 
"Oh mysterious world of all light, thou hast made a light shine within me, and I have grown in admiration of thy antique beauty, which is the immemorial youth of nature."
 
"Whatever may happen the sun will rise tomorrow as it rose to-day, beneficent and serene. "
 
"I have come to an unalterable decision -- to go and live forever in Polynesia. Then I can end my days in peace and freedom, without thoughts of tomorrow and this eternal struggle against idiots."
 
"Thanks to our cinctures and corsets we have succeeded in making an artificial being out of woman... we take away from her possibilities of development. Thus modeled...our women have nothing in common with us, and this, perhaps, may not be without grave moral and social disadvantages. "
 
"In matters of art 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."