“Michelangelo is a constructor, and Rafael an artist who, great as he is, is always limited by the model. When he tries to be thoughtful he falls below the niveau of his great rival.”

To paint is not to copy the object slavishly, it is to grasp a harmony among many relationships.

All pictures painted inside in the studio will never be as good as the things done outside.

Get to the heart of what is before you and continue to express yourself as logically as possible.

The landscape becomes human, becomes a thinking, living being within me. I become one with my picture…we merge in an iridescent chaos.

Optics, developing in us through study, teach us to see.

Under this fine rain I breathe in the innocence of the world. I feel coloured by the nuances of infinity. At this moment I am one with my picture. We are an iridescent chaos.

Whoever the master is whom you prefer, this must only be a directive for you. Otherwise you will never be anything but an imitator.

I want to die painting.

Keep good company – that is, go to the Louvre.

One does not substitute oneself for the past, one merely adds to it a new link.

There is no light painting or dark painting, but simply relations of tones.

We must not be content to memorize the beautiful formulas of our illustrious predecessors. Let us go out and study beautiful nature.

Knowledge of the means to express our emotion is essential- and is acquired only after a very long experience.

I must be more sensible and realize that at my age, illusions are hardly permitted and they will always destroy me.

The painter must enclose himself within his work; he must respond not with words, but with paintings.

Doubtless there are things in nature which have not yet been seen. If an artist discovers them, he opens the way for his successors.

In the construction of engines.entalists who observe things that cannot be explained, and theoreticians who explain things that cannot be observed.

A vast deal of ingenuity is wasted every year in evoking the undesirable, in the careful construction of objects which burden life. Frankenstein was a large rather than an isolated example.

Never worry about the delay of your success compared to others, because construction of a palace takes more time than an ordinary building.

Abstract art: a construction site for high fashion, for advertising, for furniture.

Each of us is carving a stone, erecting a column, or cutting a piece of stained glass in the construction of something much bigger than ourselves.

We must apply our humble efforts to the construction of a more just and humane world.

Criticism is not construction, it is observation.

In my early 20s I was so miserable doing construction, I wanted something that paid money. I liked nice stuff.