Quotes from Auguste Rodin

Nobody does good to men with impunity.

The modes of expression of men of genius differ as much as their souls, and it is impossible to say that in some among them, drawing and color are better or worse than in others.

The work of art is already within the block of marble. I just chop off whatever isn't needed.

Patience is also a form of action.

You must always work.

True artists are almost the only men who do their work for pleasure.

I know very well that one must fight, for one is often in contradiction to the spirit of the age.

One must work, nothing but work, and one must have patience.

Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which nature herself is animated.

The only principle in art is to copy what you see. Dealers in aesthetics to the contrary, every other method is fatal.

Sculpture is the art of the hole and the lump.

There is nothing ugly in art except that which is without character, that is to say, that which offers no outer or inner truth.

Inside you there's an artist you don't know about. He's not interested in how things look different in moonlight.

I believe that photography can create great works of art, but hitherto it has been extraordinarily bourgeois and babbling. (1908)

The human body is first and foremost a mirror to the soul and its greatest beauty comes from that.

Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.

He who is discouraged after a failure is not a real artist.

How painful it is to find that my figure can be of no help to my future... how painful to see it rejected on account of a slanderous suspicion!