When I am no longer controversial, I will no longer be important

Beauty lies in nature and reveals, once the artist has perceived it, its own expressive power.

Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it.

I am fifty years old and I have always lived in freedom; let me end my life free; when I am dead let this be said of me: 'He belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any regime except the regime of liberty.'

France is the only nation in which astoundingly small numbers of civilized patrons reside.

The principle of realism means denial of the ideal.

When I am no longer controversial, I will no longer be important