Quotes by Eugène Delacroix

“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).””

“The artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing.””

“La musique est la volupté de l'imagination.””

“Authorities are the ruination of great talents, and form almost the entire talent of mediocrities. They are the leading strings with which everyone learns to walk at the beginning of their careers, but they almost always leave a permanent mark. People like Ingres never get them out of their systems and never take a step without invoking their help. It is as though they wished to eat bread and milk all their lives (Monday 10th October 1853)””

“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).””

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

“Nature creates unity even in the parts of a whole.””

“Everything tell me that I need to live a more solitary life. The loveliest and most precious moments of my life are slipping away in amusements which, in truth, bring me nothing but boredom. (Sunday 4 April 1824).””

“It doesn’t do to leave one’s work, that is why time and nature, and indeed everything that labours slowly and ceaselessly, produces such good results, but we, whose work is constantly being interrupted, never spin the same thread from beginning to end. Before I left Paris I was producing the work of M. Delacroix, as he was a fortnight ago, now I am about to being the work of the present M. Delacroix (Wednesday 12 May 1852).””

“O shameful philanthropists! O philosophers, without heart or imagination! Do you think that man is a machine like the rest of your machines? You deprive him of his most sacred rights on the pretext of saving him from work which you pretend to consider beneath his dignity, but which is, in fact, the very law of his existence (Monday 16 May 1853).””

“He is like everyone else, a compound of strange and inexplicable contrasts, and this is what the writers of novels and plays will never understand; they make their characters all of a piece. But people are not like that. There may be ten different people in one man, and sometimes all ten appear within a single hour (Wednesday 7 December 1853).””