Quotes from Henri Matisse

There are always flowers for those who want to see them.

I am unable to make any distinction between the feeling I get from life and the way I translate that feeling into painting.

I was driven on by.. A force which I see today as something alien to my normal life... so I have been no more than a medium as it were.

It is through the human figure that I best succeed in expressing the nearly religious feeling that I have towards life.

I am unable to distinguish between the feeling I have for life and my way of expressing it.

With color one obtains an energy that seems to stem from witchcraft.

The artists must see all things as if he were seeing them for the first time. All his life he must see as he did when he was a child.

The effort to see things without distortion takes something like courage and this courage is essential to the artist, who has to look at everything as though he saw it for the first time.

I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have a light joyousness of springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me.

Nothing can be accomplished without love.

You study, you learn, but you guard the original naivete. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover.

Hatred is a parasite that devours all. One doesn't build upon hatred, but upon love.

Cutting into color reminds me of the sculptor's direct carving.

Fit the parts together, one into the other, and build your figure like a carpenter builds a house. Everything must be constructed, composed of parts that make a whole.

We ought to view ourselves with the same curiosity and openness with which we study a tree, the sky or a thought, because we too are linked to the entire universe.

Instinct must be thwarted just as one prunes the branches of a tree so that it will grow better.

I have to create an object which resembles the tree. The sign for a tree, and not the sign that other artists may have found for the tree.

Truth and reality in art do not arise until you no longer understand what you are doing and are capable of but nevertheless sense a power that grows in proportion to your resistance.

Never ruin a good painting with the truth.

It is only after years of preparation that the young artist should touch color - not color used descriptively, that is, but as a means of personal expression.

A young woman has young claws, well sharpened. If she has character, that is. And if she hasn't so much the worse for you.

I would like to recapture that freshness of vision which is characteristic of extreme youth when all the world is new to it.

Exactitude is not truth.

Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul.