Henri Quotes

We are free when our actions emanate from our total personality, when they express it, when they resemble it in the indefinable way a work of art sometimes does the artist.

Musical compositions, it should be remembered, do not inhabit certain countries, certain museums, like paintings and statues. The Mozart Quintet is not shut up in Salzburg: I have it in my pocket.

In a strange way the spiritual life isn't "useful" or "successful." But it is meant to be fruitful. And fruitfulness comes out of brokenness.

The individual's whole experience is built upon the plan of his language.

If I were to let my life be taken over by what is urgent, I might very well never get around to what is essential.

In our own woundedness, we can become sources of life for others.

Life is just a little opportunity for you during a few years to say, "I love you, too."

Only the human figure exists; landscape is, and should be, no more than an accessory; the painter exclusively of landscape is nothing but a bore.

Love is when the desire to be desired takes you so badly, that you feel you could die of it!

Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place.

The church is not an institution forcing us to follow rules but a community inviting us to still our hunger and thirst at its table.

The spiritual life is a life beyond moods. It is a life in which we choose joy and do not allow ourselves to become victims of passing feelings of happiness or depression.

This brief lifetime is my opportunity to receive love, deepen love, grow in love, and give love.

Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self.

A revolution that does not produce a new space has not realized its full potential

Community means that people come together around the table, not just to feed their bodies, but to feed their minds and their relationships.

Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.

Paint the flying spirit of the bird rather than its feathers.

Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the Beloved.

Our glory is hidden in our pain, if we allow God to bring the gift of himself in our experience of it.

God, help me to see others not as enemies or as ungodly but rather as thirsty people. And give me the courage and compassion to offer your Living Water, which alone quenches deep thirst.

Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.

Intuition is a method of feeling one's way intellectually into the inner heart of a thing to locate what is unique and inexpressible in it.

The users space is lived - not represented or conceived.

Keep a space where God can let something totally new take place.

He who loves, flies, runs, and rejoices; he is free and nothing holds him back.

Nothing makes me so happy as to observe nature and to paint what I see.

A professional model is like a stuffed owl. These girls are alive.

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

Forgiveness changes the way we remember.

When we keep claiming the light, we will find ourselves becoming more and more radiant.

As it develops, then, the concept of social space becomes broader. It infiltrates, even invades, the concept of production, becoming part - perhaps the essential part - of its content.

Novelty is seldom the essential... make a subject better from its intrinsic nature.

Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.

The motive power of democracy is love

You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.

The wise woman patterns her life on the theory and practice of modern banking. She never gives her love, but only lends it on the best security and at the highest rate of interest.

Photography to me is catching a moment which is passing, and which is true.

I've been forty years discovering that the queen of all colors is black.

Compassion can never coexist with judgement because judgement creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other.

I do not know if you bridle your pen, but when my pencil moves, it is necesary to let it go, or - crash!... nothing more.

The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.

Materialism coarsens and petrifies everything, making everything vulgar, and every truth false.

Only those ideas that are least truly ours can be adequately expressed in words.

An artist is an explorer. He has to begin by self-discovery and by observation of his own procedure. After that he must not feel under any constraint.

If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living

Creation begins with vision.

I often wonder if my knowledge about God has not become my greatest stumbling block to my knowledge of God.

It is not enough to place colors, however beautiful, one beside the other; colors must also react on one another. Otherwise, you have cacophony.

Of course one should not drink much, but often.