Paul Gauguin Quotes

Sooner or later people will learn to recognize your worth

However depressed I may be I am not in the habit of giving up a project without having tried everything, even the 'impossible', to gain my end.

How do you see those tree?... They are yellow. Well then put down yellow. And that shadow is rather blue. So render it with pure ultramarine. Those red leaves? Use vermillion.

I'd like to write the way I do my paintings, that is, as fantasy takes me, as the moon dictates.

The single most powerful tool for winning a negotiation is the ability to get up and walk away from the table without a deal

I am entering into the truth, into nature.

I am a great artist and I know it, it is because I am that I have been able to endure so much suffering.

A bit of advice, don't copy nature too closely. Art is an abstraction; as you dream amid nature, extrapolate art from it, and concentrate on what you will create as a result.

Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise, what would become of beauty?

Where do we come from? What are We? Where are we going?

In Europe men and women have intercourse because they love each other. In the South Seas they love each other because they have had intercourse. Who is right?

Sometimes people accuse me of being incomprehensible only because they look for an explicative side to my pictures which is not there.

How to re-light the fire the very ashes of which are scattered?

There is no such thing as exaggerated art. I even believe that there is salvation only in extreme.

Oh mysterious world... I have become better for having understood and having loved thy human soul - a flower which has ceased to bloom and whose fragrance no one henceforth will breathe.

Concentrate your strengths against your competitor's relative weaknesses.

It is well for young men to have a model, but let them draw the curtain over it while they are painting.

Having the certitude of a succession of days... equally free and beautiful, peace descends on me.

The landscape with its violent, pure colours dazzled and blinded me. I was always uncertain.

I was aware that on my skill as a painter would depend the physical and moral possession of the model.

Many excellent cooks are spoilt by going into the arts.

Without delay I began work, without hesitation and all of a fever.

Follow the masters! But why should one follow them? The only reason they are masters is that they didn't follow anybody!

In painting one must search rather for suggestion than for description, as is done in music.

Beware of luxury! Beware of acquiring the taste and need for it, under the pretext of providing for the morrow.

In art, all who have done something other than their predecessors have merited the epithet of revolutionary; and it is they alone who are masters.

When the physical organism breaks up, the soul survives. It then takes on another body.

You may dream freely when you listen to music as well as when you look at painting. When you read a book you are the slave of the author's mind.

Life is merely a fraction of a second. An infinitely small amount of time to fulfill our desires, our dreams, our passions.

All the joys - animal and human - of a free life are mine. I have escaped everything that is artificial, conventional, customary.

Nothing so resembles a daub as a masterpiece.

Beautiful colors exist, though we do not realize it, and are glimpsed behind the veil that modesty has drawn over them.

The work of a man is the explanation of the man.

The critics can say stupid things and we can enjoy them, if we have the legitimate feeling of superiority - the satisfaction of a duty accomplished.

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

Machines have come, art has fled, and I am far from thinking photography can help us.

A critic is someone who meddles with something that is none of his business.

Why work? The gods are there to lavish upon the faithful the good gifts of nature.

With practice the craft will come almost of itself, in spite of you and all the more easitly if you think of something besides technique.

Happiness and work rose up together with the sun, radiant like it.

There are noble tones, ordinary ones, tranquil harmonies, consoling ones, others which excite by their vigour.

A great sentiment can be rendered immediately. Dream on it and look for the simplest form in which you can express it.

Silence! I am learning to know the silence of a Tahitian night.

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 made a promise to keep a watch over myself, to remain master of myself, so that I might become a sure observer.

Look closely at the Japanese; they draw admirably and yet in them you will see life outdoors and in the sun without shadows.

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.

Soon I'll be old and I've done precious little in this world for lack of time. I am always afraid I'll become senile before I've finished what I've undertaken.

It was so simple to paint things as I saw them; to put without special calculation a red close to a blue.

Perhaps I have no talent, but all vanity aside - I do not believe that anyone makes an artistic attempt, no matter how small, without having a little - or there are many fools.