Paul Gauguin Quotes

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

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

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

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.

In the art of literature there are two contending parties. Those who aim to tell stories that are more or less well thought out, and those who aim at beautiful language, beauty of form. This contest may last a very long time; each side has a fifty-fifty chance. Only the poet can rightfully demand that verse be beautiful and nothing but.

Absinthe is the only decent drink that suits an artist.

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.

Shut your eyes in order to see.

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…

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

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.

No one is good; no one is evil; everyone is both, in the same way and in different ways. …
It is so small a thing, the life of a man, and yet there is time to do great things, fragments of the common task.

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

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

Be stingy of nothing but the name of friend, and take care not to waste your insults.