Quotes from Eugene Delacroix

Even when we look at nature, our imagination constructs the picture. (1 September 1859)

Dans la peinture, il s'établit comme un pont mystérieux entre l'âme des personnages et celle du spectateur.

Nous ne possédons réellement rien; tout nous traverse.

En littérature, la première impression est la plus forte.

Par quelle triste fatalité l'homme ne peut-il jamais jouir à la fois de toutes les facultés de sa nature, de toutes les perfections dont elle n'est susceptible qu'à des âges différents?" (Mardi 9 octobre, 1849)

I must not feel bound to ignore something today because I rejected it in the past. Books that seem to contain nothing worthwhile when I first read them may have much to teach when read by eyes of more mature experience. (Tuesday 8th October 1822)

It is one of the saddest things in life that we can never be completely known and understood by any one man. (9 June 1823)

Nature creates unity even in the parts of a whole.

Everything tell me that I need to live a more solitary life. The loveliest and most precious moments of my life are slipping away in amusements which, in truth, bring me nothing but boredom. (Sunday 4 April 1824).

Everything tells me that I need to live a more solitary life. The loveliest and most precious moments of my life are slipping away in amusements which, in truth, bring me nothing but boredom. (Sunday 4 April 1824)

By keeping a record of my experiences I live my life twice over. The past returns to me. The future is always with me. (Wednesday 7 April 1824)

Is it not very clear that progress, that is to say, the onward march of all things, good as well as evil, has brought our civilization to the brink of an abyss into which it may possibly fall, giving place to utter barbarism? And the reason for this…is it not to be found in the law that dominates all others here below, the need for change in some form or other? We must change. (Monday 23 April 1849)

A mere cast taken from nature will always be more real than the best copy a man can produce, for can anyone conceive that an artist's hand is not guided by his mind…his strange task will not be tinged with the colour of his spirit?...For the word realism to have any meaning all men would need to be of the same mind and to conceive things in the same way. For what is the supreme purpose of every form of art if it be not the effect? (22 February 1860)

Do all the work you can; that is the whole philosophy of the good way of life.

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.

What moves those of genius, what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.

Nature is a dictionary; one draws words from it.

Men of genius are made not by new ideas, but by an idea which possesses them, namely, that what has been said has not yet been sufficiently said.

The Natural History Museum is open to the public on Tuesdays and Fridays. Elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus; extraordinary animals! Rubens rendered them marvelously. I had a feeling of happiness as soon as I entered the place and the further I went the stronger it grew. I felt my whole being rise above commonplaces and trivialities and the petty worries of my daily life. What an immense variety of animals and species of different shapes and functions!

Talent does whatever it wants to do. Genius does only what it can.

Curiously enough, the Sublime is generally achieved through want of proportion.

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.

The things one experiences alone with oneself are very much stronger and purer.