Henri Quotes

Community is the fruit of our capacity to make the interests of others more important than our own.

Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience.

Of all the means of expression, photography is the only one that fixes a precise moment in time.

Art is an escape from reality.

Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.

The Church is a perpetual construction site.

Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you.

To take photographs is putting one's head, one's eye, and one's heart on the same axis

Of course it's all luck.

Think about the photo before and after, never during. The secret is to take your time. You mustn't go too fast. The subject must forget about you. Then, however, you must be very quick.

The effort to see things without distortion takes something like courage and this courage is essential to the artist, who has to look at everything as though he saw it for the first time.

The sketch hunter moves through life as he finds it, not passing negligently the things he loves, but stopping to know them, and to note them down in the shorthand of his sketchbook.

Do whatever you do intensely.

A cherished cause and a general who inspires confidence by previous success are powerful means of electrifying an army.

With your faults, dont hurry. Dont correct them thoughtlessly. What would you put in their place?

The turning point in history will be the moment man becomes aware that the only god of man is man himself.

I don't belong to any school. I work in my corner. I admire Degas.

It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover.

It's not sincereity, it is truth which frees us, because it transforms us. It tears us away from our inmost slavery.

Love is a disease which fills you with a desire to be desired.... - Comte de Toulouse

The age of the proof is in decline, it is the hour of 'witness' that is coming, hour of the 'marturioa', very calm and very complete: a hope which seems close to being realised.

Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.

Geometry is the art of correct reasoning from incorrectly drawn figures.

One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient.

It is the photo that takes you. One must not take photos.

The fruits of your labors may be reaped two generations from now. Trust, even when you don't see the results.

It is far better to foresee even without certainty than not to foresee at all.

Every good mathematician should also be a good chess player and vice versa.

My hope is that the description of God's love in my life will give you the freedom and the courage to discover... God's love in yours.

It is preferable not to travel with a dead man.

Do not let the fact that things are not made for you, that conditions are not as they should be stop you. Go on anyway. Everything depends on those who go on anyway.

Learn to limit yourself; to content yourself with some definite work; dare to be what you are and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not; and to believe in your own individuality.

In health there is freedom. Health is the first of all liberties.

We just have to recognize life for what it is: a gift to be grateful for, not a property to cling to, hoard, or defend.

When you have loved deeply, that love can grow even stronger after the death of the person you love. That is the core message of Jesus.

Cutting straight into color reminds me of the direct carving of the sculptor.

You study, you learn, but you guard the original naivete. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover.

The real question is: how can I live so that my death will be fruitful for others?

Purer colors... have in themselves, independently of the objects they serve to express, a significant action on the feelings of those who look at them.

The universe was born restless and has never since been still.

Friends share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand.

Another word for creativity is courage.

He who hides his madman, dies voiceless.

Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.

Beauty comes from the balance between two and three dimensions, between abstraction and representation - I seek the equilibrium behind changing appearances.

The man who has no inner-life is a slave to his surroundings.

I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel.

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.

Trust that the treasure we look for is hidden in the ground on which we stand.

Your life is not going to be easy, and it should not be easy. It ought to be hard. It ought to be radical; it ought to be restless; it ought to lead you to places you'd rather not go.