I am not at their orders, but at those of Nature! My confreres doubtless have their reasons for working as you have said. But in thus doing violence … - Auguste Rodin

To produce good sculpture it is not necessary to copy the works of antiquity; it is necessary first of all to regard the works of nature, and to see in those of the classics only the method by which they have interpreted nature.

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I do not need.

In art a thing is beautiful whenever it has character. Character — this is the intense truth of any natural spectacle, whether beautiful or ugly. You may even call it a double truth. For it is the inner essence expressed by the outer appearance. It is the soul, the sentiment, the idea that shines out through the features of a fare, the pose and action of a human body, the tones of a skym the line of a horizon.