Auguste Rodin Quotes

The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live. Be a man before being an artist!

Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.

Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which nature herself is animated.

The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation.

The more simple we are, the more complete we become.

The work of art is already within the block of marble. I just chop off whatever isn't needed.

Patience is also a form of action.

Love your calling with passion, it is the meaning of your life.

The human body is first and foremost a mirror to the soul and its greatest beauty comes from that.

Art is the pleasure of a spirit that enters nature and discovers that it too has a soul.

The artist enriches the soul of humanity. The artist delights people with a thousand different shades of feeling.

It is the artist who is truthful and it is photography which lies, for in reality time does not stop

I invent nothing, I rediscover.

You must always work.

An artist worthy of the name should express all the truth of nature, not only the exterior truth, but also, and above all, the inner truth.

The only principle in art is to copy what you see. Dealers in aesthetics to the contrary, every other method is fatal.

People say I think too much about women, yet, after all what is there more important to think about?

I know very well that one must fight, for one is often in contradiction to the spirit of the age.

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need.

I am like a moon that shines on an immense, unknown sea where ships never pass

Sculpture is the art of the hole and the lump.

To any artist, worthy of the name, all in nature is beautiful, because his eyes, fearlessly accepting all exterior truth, read there, as in an open book, all the inner truth.

I would have to talk for a year to repeat a single on of my works with words.

True artists are almost the only men who do their work for pleasure.

To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature

What is commonly called ugliness in nature can in art become full of beauty.

He who is discouraged after a failure is not a real artist.

There should be no argument in regard to morality in art. There is no morality in nature.

The realities of nature surpass our most ambitious dreams.

I grant you that the artist does not see Nature as she appears to the vulgar, because his emotion reveals to him the hidden truths beneath appearances.

Nobody does good to men with impunity.

In art, immorality cannot exist. Art is always sacred.

My drawings are the result of my sculpture.

The modes of expression of men of genius differ as much as their souls, and it is impossible to say that in some among them, drawing and color are better or worse than in others.

If we now seek the spiritual significance of the technique of Michelangelo we shall find that his sculpture expressed restless energy.

How painful it is to find that my figure can be of no help to my future... how painful to see it rejected on account of a slanderous suspicion!

Inside you there's an artist you don't know about. He's not interested in how things look different in moonlight.

Recently I have taken to isolating limbs, the torso. Why am I blamed for it? Why is the head allowed and not portions of the body? Every part of the human figure is expressive.

Even with all the documents, you can never forge nature

Black is the queen of colours.

There is no need to create. Genius comes only to those who know how to use their eyes and their intelligence.

There is nothing ugly in art except that which is without character, that is to say, that which offers no outer or inner truth.

Mystery is like a kind of atmosphere which bathes the greatest works of the masters.

Mere exactitude, of which photography and moulage [life casting] are the lowest forms, does not inspire feelings.

I believe that photography can create great works of art, but hitherto it has been extraordinarily bourgeois and babbling. (1908)

The artist has only to trust his eyes.

One must work, nothing but work, and one must have patience.

The delicate droop of the petals standing out in relief, is like the eyelid of a child.

To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature.

I invent nothing. I rediscover.