Nourish yourself with grand and austere ideas of beauty that feed the soul Seek solitude.
Eugene DelacroixThe outcome of my days is always the same; an infinite desire for what one never gets; a void one cannot fill; an utter yearning to produce in all ways, to battle as much as possible against time that drags us along, and the distractions that throw a veil over our soul.
Eugene DelacroixCold exactitude is not art; ingenious artifice, when it pleases or when it expresses, is art itself.
Eugene DelacroixThe artist is always concerned with a total view of the world. However, when the photographer takes a picture ... the edge of his picture is just as interesting as the middle, one can only guess at the existence of a whole, and the view presented seems chosen by chance.
Eugene DelacroixThe true wisdom of the philosopher ought to insist in enjoying everything. Yet we apply ourselves to dissecting and destroying everything that is good in itself, that has virtue, albeit the virtue there is in mere illusions. Nature gives us this life like a toy to a weak child. We want to see how it all works; we break everything. There remains in our hands, and before our eyes, stupid and opened too late, the sterile wreckage, fragments that will not again make a whole. The good is so simple.
Eugene DelacroixArtists who seek perfection in everything are those who can't attain it in anything.
Eugene DelacroixIf one considered life as a simple loan, one would perhaps be less exacting. We possess actually nothing; everything goes through us.
Eugene DelacroixAll painting worth its name, unless one is talking about black and white, must include the idea of color as one of its necessary supports, in the same way that it includes chiaroscuro, proportion, and perspective.
Eugene DelacroixA picture is nothing but a bridge between the soul of the artist and that of the spectator.
Eugene DelacroixGlory to that Homer of painting, to that father of warmth and enthusiasm... he really paints men.
Eugene DelacroixLet a man of genius make use [of photography] as it should be used, and he will raise himself to a height that we do not know.
Eugene DelacroixThe source of genius is imagination alone, the refinement of the senses that sees what others do not see, or sees them differently.
Eugene DelacroixIf you are not skillful enough to sketch a man jumping out of a window in the time it takes him to fall from the fourth storey to the ground, you will never be able to produce great works.
Eugene DelacroixI am carrying out my plan, so long formulated, of keeping a journal. What I most keenly wish is not to forget that I am writing for myself alone. Thus I shall always tell the truth, I hope, and thus I shall improve myself. These pages will reproach me for my changes of mind.
Eugene DelacroixEveryone knows that yellow, orange, and red suggest ideas of joy and plenty. I can paint you the skin of Venus with mud, provided you let me surround it as I will.
Eugene DelacroixWhat moves those of genius, what inspires their work is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.
Eugene DelacroixYou increase your self-respect when you feel you've done everything you ought to have done, and if there is nothing else to enjoy, there remains that chief of pleasures, the feeling of being pleased with oneself. A man gets an immense amount of satisfaction from the knowledge of having done good work and of having made the best use of his day, and when I am in this state I find that I thoroughly enjoy my rest and even the mildest forms of recreation.
Eugene DelacroixReal beauty in the arts is eternal and would be accepted at all periods; but it wears the dress of its century: something of that dress clings to it, and woe to the works which appear in periods when the general taste is corrupted.
Eugene DelacroixExperience has two things to teach. The first is that we must correct a great deal and the second, that we must not correct too much.
Eugene Delacroix