Quotes from Edgar Degas

I would have been in mortal misery all my life for fear my wife might say, "That's a pretty little thing," after I had finished a picture.

I felt so insufficiently equipped, so unprepared, so weak, and at the same time it seemed to me that my reflections on art were correct. I quarreled with all the world and with myself.

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

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

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.

I frequently lock myself in my studio. I do not often see the people I love, and in the end I shall suffer for it... painting is one's private life.

A picture is a thing which requires as much knavery, as much malice, and as much vice as the perpetration of a crime. Make it untrue and add an accent of truth.

Daylight is too easy. What I want is difficult - the atmosphere of lamps and moonlight.

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

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

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

What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming.

A man is an artist only at certain moments, by an effort of will. Objects have the same appearance for everybody.

These women of mine are decent, simple human beings who have no other concern than that of their physical condition... it is as though one were watching through a keyhole.

There are some women who should barely be spoken to; they should only be caressed.

Work a great deal at evening effects, lamplight, candlelight, etc. The intriguing thing is not to show the source of the light but the effect of the lighting.

One must have a high opinion of a work of art - not the work one is creating at the moment, but of that which one desires to achieve one day. Without this it is not worthwhile working.

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

One must do the same subject over again ten times, a hundred times. In art nothing must resemble an accident, not even movement.

Once they witnessed one of his painting sold at auction for $100,000. And asked how you do it, he said, 'I feel as a horse must feel when the beautiful cup is given to the jockey.'

Nothing in art should seem accidental, not even movement

Art is vice. You don't wed it, you rape it.

I want to be famous but unknown!

Art is not what you see but what you make others see