Permanent success cannot be achieved except by incessant intellectual labour, always inspired by the ideal.

Although all new ideas are born in France, they are not readily adopted there. It seems that they must first commence to prosper in a foreign country.

I refuse the title of artist to those who owe their reputations to a physical deformity. I regard them as buffoons.

Energy creates energy. It is by spending myself that I become rich.

[When asked at age 79 why her Paris apartment was located up many flights of stairs at the top of the building:] It's the only way I can still make the hearts of men beat faster.

New ideas come into this world somewhat like falling meteors, with a flash and an explosion, and perhaps somebody's castle-roof perforated.

What matters poverty? What matters anything to him who is enamoured of our art? Does he not carry in himself every joy and every beauty?