Top 15 Eugène Delacroix Quotes

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

What drives men of genius is their obsession with the idea that what has already been done is not good enough.

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.

Of which beauty will you speak? There are many: there are a thousand: there is one for every look, for every spirit, adapted to each taste, to each particular constitution.

Draftsmen may be made, but colorists are born.

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.

When all is said and done scholars can do no more than find in nature what is already there.

…the outcome of my days is always the same; an infinite desire for what one never gets; a void one cannot fill; an utter yearning to produce in all ways, to battle against time that drags us along, and the distractions that throw a veil over our soul…….one works not only to produce art but to give value to time…. — Eugène Delacroix (1798 -1863)

Each of the beings necessary to our existence who disappears takes away with him a whole world of feelings that no other relationship can revive.

Before you begin, study unceasingly, but once started, make mistake if you must but you must execute freely (12 May 1855).

Fine works of art would never become dated if they contained nothing but genuine feeling. The language of the emotions and the impulses of the human heart never change (26 March 1854).

Nature creates unity even in the parts of a whole.

How strange painting is, it delights us with representations of objects that are not pleasing in themselves! (15 September 1854)

Human beings are so strangely constructed that they often find consolation and even happiness in misfortune (for instance, when ones is unjustly persecuted, the comfort of knowing that one deserves a better fate), but it far more happens that a man will be bored by prosperity and even think himself supremely miserable (19 July 1854).