Auguste Rodin Quotes Page 2

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

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

“Patience is also a form of action.”

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

“Sculpture is the art of the hole and the lump.”

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

“The artist has only to trust his eyes.”

“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 body always expresses the spirit whose envelope it is. And for him who can see, the nude offers the richest meaning.”

“The dazzling splendour revealed to the artist by the model that divests herself of her clothes has the effect of the sun piercing the clouds. Venus, Eve, these are feeble terms to express the beauty of women.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“The nude alone is well dressed.”

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

“The realities of nature surpass our most ambitious dreams.”

“The sculptor represents the transition from one pose to another he indicates how insensibly the first glides into the second. In his work we still see a part of what was and we discover a part of what is to be.”

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

“There are unknown forces in nature; when we give ourselves wholly to her, without reserve, she lends them to us; she shows us these forms, which our watching eyes do not see, which our intelligence does not understand or suspect.”

“There is grace in elegance, but beyond grace there is perfection.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature.”

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

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

“Where did I learn to understand sculpture? In the woods by looking at the trees, along roads by observing the formation of clouds, in the studio by studying the model, everywhere except in the schools.”

“Where shall we begin? There is no beginning. Start where you arrive. Stop before what entices you. And work! You will enter little by little into the entirety. Method will be born in proportion to your interest.”