Salvador Dalí quotes

“A true artist is not one who is inspired, but one who inspires others.”

“An elegant woman is a woman who despises you and has no hair under her arms.”

“At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.”

“Beauty should be edible, or not at all.”

“Begin by learning to draw and paint like the old masters. After that, you can do as you like; everyone will respect you.”

“Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dali.”

“Everyone should eat hashish, but only once.”

“Give me two hours a day of activity, and I’ll take the other twenty-two in dreams.”

“Happy is he who causes a scandal.”

“Have no fear of perfection - you’ll never reach it.”

“I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.”

“I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.”

“I want to perceive and understand the hidden powers and laws of things, in order to have them in my power.”

“Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.”

“It is not necessary for the public to know whether I am joking or whether I am serious, just as it is not necessary for me to know it myself.”

“It’s better to have loved and lost than do forty pounds of laundry a week.”

“Let my enemies devour each other.”

“Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them. On the contrary: rationalize them, understand them thoroughly. After that, it will be possible for you to sublimate them.”

“No masterpiece was ever created by a lazy artist.”

“One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.”

“People love mystery, and that is why they love my paintings.”

“Since I don’t smoke, I decided to grow a mustache – it is better for the health. However, I always carried a jewel-studded cigarette case in which, instead of tobacco, were carefully placed several mustaches, Adolphe Menjou style. I offered them politely to my friends: “Mustache? Mustache? Mustache?” Nobody dared to touch them. This was my test regarding the sacred aspect of mustaches.”

“So little of what could happen does happen.”

“Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.”

“The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.”

“The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.”

“The one thing the world will never have enough of is the outrageous.”

“The secret of my influence has always been that it remained secret.”

“The thermometer of success is merely the jealousy of the malcontents.”

“There are some days when I think I’m going to die from an overdose of satisfaction.”

“There is more madness to my method than method to my madness.”

“There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.”

“Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.”

“Wars have never hurt anybody except the people who die.”

“When I paint, the sea roars. The others splash about in the bath.”

“When the creations of a genius collide with the mind of a layman, and produce an empty sound, there is little doubt as to which is at fault.”