What is art? Prostitution.

Always be drunk ... Get drunk militantly. Just get drunk.

The photographic industry was the refuge of all the painters who couldn't make it, either because they had no talent or because they were too lazy to finish their studies. Hence this universal infatuation was not only characterized by blindness and stupidity, but also by vindictiveness.

If wine were to disappear from human production, I believe it would cause an absence, a failure in health and intellect, a void much more terrifying than all the recesses and the deviations for which wine is regarded as responsible.

In the domain of painting and statuary, the present-day credo of the worldly wise, especially in France, is this: ... I believe that art is, and can only be, the exact reproduction of nature... An avenging God has heard the prayers of this multitude; Daguerre was his messiah.

In certain almost supernatural states of the soul, the profundity of life reveals itself entirely in the spectacle, however ordinary it may be, before one's eyes. It becomes its symbol.

If a given combination of trees, mountains, water, and houses, say a landscape, is beautiful, it is not so by itself, but because of me, of my favor, of the idea or feeling I attach to it.