One can thus state, without fear of being wrong, that every truly artistic production has been conceived and executed according to the principle of irregularity.

It took me twenty years to discover painting: twenty years looking at nature, and above all, going to the Louvre.

To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty, yes pretty! There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them.

Art is about emotion; if art needs to be explained it is no longer art.

One morning, one of us ran out of the black, it was the birth of Impressionism.

When I've painted a woman's bottom so that I want to touch it, then [the painting] is finished.

Work lovingly done is the secret of all order and all happiness.

Why shouldn’t art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world.

One must from time to time attempt things that are beyond one's capacity.

Photography freed painting from a lot of tiresome chores, starting with family portraits.

Regularity, order, desire for perfection destroy art. Irregularity is the basis of all art.

If you can see it, you can achieve it. God helps those who helps themselves. Power is in the act of humility.

Beer. Now there's a temporary solution!

Reason, it is true, is DICTATOR in the Society of Mankind; from her there ought to lie no Appeal; But here we want a Pope in our Philosophy, to be the infallible Judge of what is or is not Reason.

You can have all you can expect and accept.

In retrospect, each of the steps toward this abyss seemed irrevocable, and yet they had all been so small!

From the age of three on, as far back as I remember, I just knew there was a God behind everything.

Weeding is as necessary to agriculture as sowing.

I am not going to be dictated to by fans, certainly. I am dictated enough to by my record company to last me a million years.

I think superstition has a lot to do with fear: the less, the better.

I don't think of myself as an American; I see myself as a human being.