Edgar Degas Quotes

Quotes about:

• Drawing is not what you see but what you must make others see.

  Edgar Degas

  Beauty, Dance, Art

  "The shop-talk of Edgar Degas".

  104 Copy quote

• I'm glad I haven't found my style yet. I'd be bored to death.

  Edgar Degas

  Bored, Style, Found

  "Degas: An Intimate Portrait (Technical Details)". Book by Ambroise Vollard (1927) translated by Randolph T. Weaver (p. 70), 1986.

  4 Copy quote

• A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people.

  Edgar Degas

  Art, People, Vagueness

  "Souvenirs sur Degas (Memories of Degas)". Book by Georges Jeanniot, 1933.

  71 Copy quote

• The true traveler never arrives.

  Edgar Degas

  Traveler

  55 Copy quote

• You must aim high, not in what you are going to do at some future date, but in what you are going to make yourself do to-day. Otherwise, working is just a waste of time.

  Edgar Degas

  Artist, Waste, Wasting Time

  Edgar Degas' remark to E. Rouart (1904), as quoted in Franois Fosca "Renoir: His Life and Work" (p. 274), 1961.

  71 Copy quote

• The fascinating thing, is not to show the source of light, but the effect of light.

  Edgar Degas

  Light, Source, Shows

  6 Copy quote

• Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do.

  Edgar Degas

  Art, Experience, Painting

  60 Copy quote

• Conversation in real life is full of half-finished sentences and overlapping talk. Why shouldn't painting be too?

  Edgar Degas

  Real, Communication, Half

  62 Copy quote

• If painting weren't so difficult, it wouldn't be fun.

  Edgar Degas

  Fun, Painting, Difficult

  20 Copy quote

• Everyone has talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it at fifty.

  Edgar Degas

  Artist, Fifty, Twenties

  51 Copy quote

• I feel as a horse must feel when the beautiful cup is given to the jockey.

  Edgar Degas

  Beautiful, Horse, Jockeys

  10 Copy quote

• People call me the painter of dancing girls. It has never occurred to them that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering movement and painting pretty clothes.

  Edgar Degas

  Girl, Lying, Clothes

  Edgar Degas, Russell Ash (1992). “Degas' Ballet Dancers”, Universe Pub

  7 Copy quote

• The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he has to make others see.

  Edgar Degas

  Art, Artist, Doe

  42 Copy quote

• An artist must approach his work in the spirit of the criminal about to commit a crime.

  Edgar Degas

  Artist, Criminals, Spirit

  7 Copy quote

• We were created to look at one another, weren't we?

  Edgar Degas

  Artist, Looks

  "Walter Sickert: The Complete Writings on Art". Book edited by Anna Gruetzner Robins, December 2000.

  11 Copy quote

• No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters.

  Edgar Degas

  Art, Reflection, Study

  Ann Dumas, Edgar Degas (1996). “Degas As a Collector”

  52 Copy quote

• Muses work all day long and then at night get together and dance.

  Edgar Degas

  Night, Long, Together

  31 Copy quote

• It is all very well to copy what one sees, but it is far better to draw what one now only sees in one's memory. That is a transformation in which imagination collaborates with memory.

  Edgar Degas

  Memories, Imagination, Transformation

  47 Copy quote

• There is love, and there is work; and we have only one heart.

  Edgar Degas

  Heart

  10 Copy quote

• Truth is never ugly when one can find in it what one needs.

  Edgar Degas

  Truth, Needs, Ugly

  Malcolm R. Daniel, Edgar Degas, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.), Bibliothèque nationale de France (1998). “Edgar Degas, Photographer”, p.29, Metropolitan Museum of Art

  17 Copy quote

• C'est vrai. Voilá quelqu'un qui sent comme moi. (It is true. There is someone who feels as I do).

  Edgar Degas

  Feels

  14 Copy quote

• Drawing is the artist's most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality.

  Edgar Degas

  Writing, Artist, Expression

  14 Copy quote

• Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.

  Edgar Degas

  Art, Knowledge, Doe

  "Artists on Art: From the XIV to the XX Century". Book edited by Robert Goldwater, 1945.

  30 Copy quote

• Make a drawing. Start it all over again, trace it. Start it and trace it again.

  Edgar Degas

  Drawing

  Robert Hale Ives Gammell, Edgar Degas (1961). “The shop-talk of Edgar Degas”

  40 Copy quote

• If I could have had my own way, I would have confined myself to black and white.

  Edgar Degas

  Black And White, Way, My Own

  Edgar Degas (1963). “Degas”

  44 Copy quote

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