Quotes from Paul Gauguin

All the masters have those weak points that are called masterpieces; and besides, they do them as crowd pleasers -- to prove that they have the know-how.

The self-esteem one acquires and a well-earned feeling of one's strength are the only consolation in this world. Income, after all, most brutes have that.

Beautiful colors exist, though we do not realize it, and are glimpsed behind the veil that modesty has drawn over them.

Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise, what would become of beauty?

Absinthe is the only decent drink that suits an artist.

I tried to make everything breathe in this painting: faith, quiet suffering, religious and primitive style, and great nature with its scream.

Is there a recipe for making beauty? The schools give recipes, but they do not beget works that make people exclaim: " How beautiful that is!

Shut your eyes in order to see.

Moved by an unconsious sentiment born out of solitude and savagery - idle tales of a noughty child who sometimes reflects and who is always a lover of the beautiful - the beauty that is personal - the only beauty that is human.

Brave as you may be, wise even as you may be, you tremble when the earth trembles. That is a sensation common to everybody and which no one would ever deny.

I find everything poetic, and it's in the corners of my heart which are sometimes mysterious that I catch a glimpse of poetry… I feel a sensation that leads me into a poetic state…

Don't paint from nature too much. Art is an abstraction. Derive this abstraction from nature while dreaming before it, and think more of the creation that will result.

Do what you like, so long as it is intelligent.

Neuznávám žádnou jinou pravdu, kromÄ› pravdy umÄ›lecké lži.

Where do we come from?" "What are we?""Where are we going?