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The 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 Delacroix

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The True Wisdom Of

Eugene Delacroix

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The 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.

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Painters Who Are Not Colorists Produce Illumination, Not Painting.

You 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.

Draughtsmen May Be Made, But Colourists Are Born.

What Is Real For Me Are The Illusions I Create With My Paintings. Everything Else Is Quicksand.

The First Virtue Of A Painting Is To Be A Feast For The Eyes.

It Is Only Possible To Speak In The Language And In The Spirit Of One's Time.

I Go To Work As Others Rush To See Their Mistresses, And When I Leave, I Take Back With Me To My Solitude, Or In The Midst Of The Distractions That I Pursue, A Charming Memory That Does Not In The Least Resemble The Troubled Pleasure Of Lovers.

When A Thing Bores You, Do Not Do It.

The Only Ones Who Can Really Benefit By Consulting The Model Are Those Who Can Produce Their Effect Without A Model.

How Can This World, Which Is So Beautiful, Include So Much Horror?

They Say That Each Generation Inherits From Those That Have Gone Before; If This Were So There Would Be No Limit To Man's Improvements Or To His Power Of Reaching Perfection. But He Is Very Far From Receiving Intact That Storehouse Of Knowledge Which The Centuries Have Piled Up Before Him; He May Perfect Some Inventions, But In Others, He Lags Behind The Originators, And A Great Many Inventions Have Been Lost Entirely. What He Gains On The One Hand, He Loses On The Other.

Criticism Is Like Many Other Things, It Drags Along After What Has Already Been Said And Doesn't Get Out Of Its Rut.

Even When We Look At Nature, Our Imagination Constructs The Picture.

The Artist Who Aims At Perfection In Everything Achieves It In Nothing.

If One Considered Life As A Simple Loan, One Would Perhaps Be Less Exacting. We Possess Actually Nothing; Everything Goes Through Us.

Mediocre People Have An Answer For Everything And Are Astonished At Nothing. They Always Want To Have The Air Of Knowing Better Than You What You Are Going To Tell Them; When, In Their Turn, They Begin To Speak, They Repeat To You With The Greatest Confidence, As If Dealing With Their Own Property, The Things That They Have Heard You Say Yourself At Some Other Place. A Capable And Superior Look Is The Natural Accompaniment Of This Type Of Character.

What Makes Sovereign Ugliness Are Our Conventions.

Cold Exactitude Is Not Art... The So-called Consciousness Of The Majority Of Painters Is Only Perfection Applied To The Art Of Boring. People Like That, If They Could, Would Work With The Same Minute Attention On The Back Of Their Canvas.

The So-called Conscientiousness Of The Majority Of Painters Is Only Perfection Applied To The Art Of Boring.

Do All The Work You Can; That Is The Whole Philosophy Of The Good Way Of Life.

There Is A Man Whose Qualities Can Be Savored By People Who Are Getting Old... The Painter Qualities Are Carried To The Highest Point In His Work: What He Does Is Done - Through And Through; When He Paints Eyes, They Are Lit With The Fire Of Life.

Glory To That Homer Of Painting, To That Father Of Warmth And Enthusiasm... He Really Paints Men.

Every Time I Await A Model, Even When I Am Most Pressed To Time, I Am Overjoyed When The Time Comes And I Tremble When I Hear The Key Turn In The Door.

I Live In Company With A Body, A Silent Companion, Exacting And Eternal. He It Is Who Notes That Individuality Which Is The Seal Of The Weakness Of Our Race. My Soul Has Wings, But The Brutal Jailer Is Strict.

The Living Model Never Answers Well The Idea Or Impressions The Painter Wishes To Express; One Must, Therefore, Learn To Do Without One, And For That, You Must Acquire Facility, Furnish One's Memory To The Point Of Infinitude, And Make Numerous Drawings After The Old Masters.

I Have Told Myself A Hundred Times That Painting - That Is, The Material Thing Called A Painting - Is No More Than A Pretext, The Bridge Between The Mind Of The Painter And The Mind Of The Spectator.

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Talent Does Whatever It Wants To Do. Genius Does Only What It Can.

Take Hold Of Objects By Their Centres, Not By Their Lines Of Contour... The Contour Accentuated Uniformly And Beyond Proportion, Destroys Plasticity, Bringing Forward Those Parts Of An Object Which Are Always Most Distant From The Eye - Namely Its Outlines.

The More An Object Is Polished Or Brilliant, The Less You See Its Own Color And The More It Becomes A Mirror Reflecting The Color Of Its Surroundings.

Of Which Beauty Will You Speak? There Are Many: There Are A Thousand: There Is One For Every Look, For Every Spirit, Adapted To Each Taste, To Each Particular Constitution.

If I Haven't Fought For My Country At Least I'll Paint For Her.

The Things One Experiences Alone With Oneself Are Very Much Stronger And Purer.

God Is That Inner Presence Which Makes Us Admire The Beautiful And Consoles Us For Not Sharing The Happiness Of The Wicked.

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Can Any Man Say With Certainty That He Was Happy At A Particular Moment Of Time Which He Remembers As Being Delightful? Remembering It Certainly Makes Him Happy, Because He Realizes How Happy He Could Have Been, But At The Actual Moment When The Alleged Happiness Was Occurring, Did He Really Feel Happy? He Was Like A Man Owning A Piece Of Ground In Which, Unknown To Himself, A Treasure Lay Buried.

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To Be Understood A Writer Has To Explain Almost Everything.

A Picture Is Nothing But A Bridge Between The Soul Of The Artist And That Of The Spectator.

Everyone 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.

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Remember The Enemy Of All Painting Is Gray: A Painting Will Almost Always Appear Grayer Than It Is, On Account Of Its Oblique Position Under The Light.

Nourish Yourself With Grand And Austere Ideas Of Beauty That Feed The Soul Seek Solitude.

A Taste For Simplicity Cannot Last For Long.

One Should Not Be Too Difficult. An Artist Should Not Treat Himself Like An Enemy.

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Nature Creates Unity Even In The Parts Of A Whole.

Parts Of A Whole

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Perfect Beauty Implies Perfect Simplicity, A Quality That At First Sight Does Not Arouse The Emotions Which We Feel Before Gigantic Works, Objects Whose Very Disproportion Constitutes An Element Of Beauty.

Delsarte Tells Me That Mozart Stole Outrageously From Galuppi, In The Same Way, I Suppose, That Molière Stole From Anybody Anywhere, If He Found Something Work Taking. I Said That What Was Mozart Had Not Been Stolen From Galuppi, Or From Anyone Else For That Matter.

Experience Alone Can Give, Even To The Greatest Talent, That Confidence In Having Done All That Could Be Done.

All 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.

Black And White

Do Not Be Troubled For A Language, Cultivate Your Soul And She Will Show Herself.

Let 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.

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