Edgar Degas Quotes

The fascinating thing, is not to show the source of light, but the effect of light.

A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people.

The true traveler never arrives.

Drawing is not what you see but what you must make others see.

Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do.

You must aim high, not in what you are going to do at some future date, but in what you are going to make yourself do to-day. Otherwise, working is just a waste of time.

I'm glad I haven't found my style yet. I'd be bored to death.

Conversation in real life is full of half-finished sentences and overlapping talk. Why shouldn't painting be too?

People call me the painter of dancing girls. It has never occurred to them that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering movement and painting pretty clothes.

An artist must approach his work in the spirit of the criminal about to commit a crime.

If painting weren't so difficult, it wouldn't be fun.

The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he has to make others see.

Everyone has talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it at fifty.

It is all very well to copy what one sees, but it is far better to draw what one now only sees in one's memory. That is a transformation in which imagination collaborates with memory.

There is love, and there is work; and we have only one heart.

We were created to look at one another, weren't we?

I should like to be famous and unknown.

Truth is never ugly when one can find in it what one needs.

C'est vrai. Voilá quelqu'un qui sent comme moi. (It is true. There is someone who feels as I do).

My art, what do you want to say about it? Do you think you can explain the merits of a picture to those who do not see them? . . . I can find the best and clearest words to explain my meaning, and I have spoken to the most intelligent people about art, and they have not understood; but among people who understand, words are not necessary, you say humph, he, ha and everything has been said.

It is people's movement that consoles us. If the leaves of a tree did not move, how sad would be the tree - and so should we.

Muses work all day long and then at night get together and dance.

No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters.

Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.

Instantaneity is photography.