Claude Monet Quotes

The next day, the cycle starts again. We're set out like decorative plates in this cavernous architecture, and such a craggy dining hall it is. Not exactly a Claude Monet cottage, more of a Medieval bastion - a vestige of Roman conquests. It still moans with the rickety sounds of age. I can almost hear the grumblings of ancient inhabitants. ~ Michael Ben Zehabe

Now, more than ever, I realize just how illusory my undeserved success has been. I still hold out some hope of doing better, but age and unhappiness have sapped my strength. ~ Claude Monet

My garden is a slow work, pursued with love and I do not deny that I am proud of it. Forty years ago, when I established myself here, there was nothing but a farmhouse and a poor orchard ... I bought the house and little by little I enlarged and organized it ... I dug, planted weeded, myself; in the evenings the children watered. ~ Claude Monet

Everyday I discover more and more beautiful things. It's enough to drive one mad. I have such a desire to do everything, my head is bursting with it. ~ Claude Monet

The light constantly changes, and that alters the atmosphere and beauty of things every minute. ~ Claude Monet

I've said it before and can only repeat that I owe everything to Boudin and I attribute my success to him. I came to be fascinated by his studies, the products of what I call instantaneity. ~ Claude Monet

A good impression is lost so quickly ... ~ Claude Monet

If only the weather would improve, there'd be hope of some work, but every day brings rain. ~ Claude Monet

It is only too easy to catch people's attention by doing something worse than anyone else has dared to do it before. ~ Claude Monet

Light is the most important person in the picture. ~ Claude Monet

Pictures aren't made out of doctrines. Since the appearance of impressionism, the official salons, which used to be brown, have become blue, green, and red ... But peppermint or chocolate, they are still confections. ~ Claude Monet

All I did was to look at what the universe showed me, to let my brush bear witness to it. ~ Claude Monet

I can only draw what I see. ~ Claude Monet

I have made tremendous efforts to work in a darker register and express the sinister and tragic quality of the place, given my natural tendency to work in light and pale tones. ~ Claude Monet

If the world really looks like that I will paint no more! ~ Claude Monet

The creditors are proving impossible to deal with and short of a sudden appearance on the scene of wealthy art patrons, we are going to be turned out of this dear little house where I led a simple life and was able to work so well. I do not know what will become of us ... ~ Claude Monet

I had so much fire in me and so many plans ... ~ Claude Monet

I've spent so long on some paintings that I no longer know what to think of them, and I am definitely getting harder to please; nothing satisfies me ... ~ Claude Monet

The point is to know how to use the colours, the choice of which is, when all's said and done, a matter of habit. ~ Claude Monet

When it is dark, it seems to me as if I were dying, and I can't think any more. ~ Claude Monet

I would like to paint the way a bird sings. ~ Claude Monet

It would be a very bad idea ... to exhibit even a small number of this new series, as the whole effect can only be achieved from an exhibition of the entire group. ~ Claude Monet

I say that whoever claims to have finished a canvas is terribly arrogant. ~ Claude Monet

It took me time to understand my water lilies. I had planted them for the pleasure of it; I grew them without ever thinking of painting them. ~ Claude Monet

I'm enjoying the most perfect tranquillity, free from all worries, and in consequence would like to stay this way forever, in a peaceful corner of the countryside like this. ~ Claude Monet

The further I get, the more I regret how little I know ... ~ Claude Monet

I get madder and madder on giving back what I feel. ~ Claude Monet

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. ~ Claude Monet

One can do something if one can see and understand it ... ~ Claude Monet

I'm not lacking for enthusiasm as you can see, given that I have something like 65 canvases covered with paint and I'll be needing more since the place is quite out of the ordinary; so I'm going to order some more canvases ... ~ Claude Monet

Lots of people will protest that it's quite unreal and that I'm out of my mind, but that's just too bad ~ Claude Monet

Claude Monet was the incomparable painter of bright daylight...Monet was the painter of light. ~ Christoph Heinrich

All of a sudden I had the revelation of how enchanting my pond was. ~ Claude Monet

What keeps my heart awake is colorful silence. ~ Claude Monet

The only merit I have is to have painted directly from nature with the aim of conveying my impressions in front of the most fugitive effects. ~ Claude Monet

I don't think I'm made for any earthly kind of pleasure. ~ Claude Monet

One day Boudin said to me, 'Learn to draw well and appreciate the sea, the light, the blue sky.' I took his advice. ~ Claude Monet

While adding the finishing touches to a painting might appear insignificant, it is much harder to do than one might suppose ... ~ Claude Monet

Water Lilies' is an extension of my life. Without the woter the lilies cannot live, as I am without art. ~ Claude Monet

I want to paint the way a bird sings. ~ Claude Monet

It's the hardest thing to be alone in being satisfied with what one's done. ~ Claude Monet

Getting up at 4 in the morning, I slave away all day until by the evening I'm exhausted, and I end by forgetting all my responsibilities, thinking only of the work I've set out to do. ~ Claude Monet

Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love. ~ Claude Monet

I'm getting so slow at my work it makes me despair, but ... I'm increasingly obsessed by the need to render what I experience, and I'm praying that I'll have a few more good years left to me ... ~ Claude Monet

I have once more taken up things that can't be done: water with grasses weaving on the bottom. But I'm always tackling that sort of thing! ~ Claude Monet

It is a tragedy that we live in a world where physical courage is so common, and moral courage is so rare. ~ Claude Monet

Canvases between 8 centimetres and 1 metre are priced around 25,000 francs. In the past I used to sell them from between 50 to 100 francs at the most. I have to say ... that I feel somewhat embarrassed at this admission. ~ Claude Monet

Despite my exhaustion I have a devil of a time getting to sleep because of the rats above my bed and a pig who lives beneath my room ... ~ Claude Monet

Take clear water with grass waving at the bottom. It's wonderful to look at, but to try to paint it is enough to make one insane. ~ Claude Monet

To have gone to all this trouble to get to this is just too stupid! Outside there's brilliant sunshine but I don't feel up to looking at it ... ~ Claude Monet

One's better off alone, and yet there are so many things that are impossible to fathom on one's own. In fact it's a terrible business and the task is a hard one. ~ Claude Monet

I am enslaved to my work, always wanting the impossible, and never, I believe, have I been less favoured by the endlessly changeable weather. ~ Claude Monet

I see less and less ... I need to avoid lateral light, which darkens my colors. Nevertheless, I always paint at the times of day most propitious for me, as long as my paint tubes and brushes are not mixed up ... I will paint almost blind, as Beethoven composed completely deaf. ~ Claude Monet

Nothing in the whole world is of interest to me but my painting and my flowers. ~ Claude Monet

I am pleased with the exhibition ... everything on display was sold for a good price to decent people. It has been a long time since I believed that you could educate public taste ... ~ Claude Monet

I'm very happy, very delighted. I'm setting to like a fighting cockerel, for I'm surrounded here by all that I love. ~ Claude Monet

I'm quite content: although what I'm doing is far from being as I should like, I am complemented often enough all the same ... ~ Claude Monet

Paint what you really see, not what you think you ought to see; not the object isolated as in a test tube, but the object enveloped in sunlight and atmosphere, with the blue dome of Heaven reflected in the shadows. ~ Claude Monet

I will bring lots of studies back with me so I can work on some big things at home. ~ Claude Monet

In Naples, Fla., I met a self-made man, a multimillionaire, whose round penthouse apartment is home to Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Henry Moore, and Mickey Mantle. He had purchased the most coveted items auctioned by the Mantle family at Madison Square Garden in December 2003. ~ Jane Leavy

It was at home I learned the little I know. Schools always appeared to me like a prison, and never could I make up my mind to stay there, not even for four hours a day, when the sunshine was inviting, the sea smooth, and when it was joy to run about the cliffs in the free air, or to paddle in the water. ~ Claude Monet

The Seine. I have painted it all my life, at all hours of the day, at all times of the year, from Paris to the sea…Argenteuil, Poissy, Vétheuil, Giverny, Rouen, Le Havre. ~ Claude Monet

Impressionism is only direct sensation. All great painters were less or more impressionists. It is mainly a question of instinct, and much simpler than [John Singer] Sargent thinks. ~ Claude Monet

I haven't yet managed to capture the colour of this landscape; there are moments when I'm appalled at the colours I'm having to use, I'm afraid what I'm doing is just dreadful and yet I really am understating it; the light is simply terrifying. ~ Claude Monet

Techniques vary, art stays the same; it is a transposition of nature at once forceful and sensitive. ~ Claude Monet

As for myself, I met with as much success as I ever could have wanted. In other words, I was enthusiastically run-down by every critic of the period. ~ Claude Monet

It's enough to drive you crazy, trying to depict the weather, the atmosphere, the ambience. ~ Claude Monet

These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession. ~ Claude Monet

Listening only to my instincts, I discovered superb things. ~ Claude Monet

It really is appallingly difficult to do something which is complete in every respect, and I think most people are content with mere approximations. Well, my dear friend, I intend to battle on, scrape off and start again ... ~ Claude Monet

I'm not performing miracles, I'm using up and wasting a lot of paint ... ~ Claude Monet

I know well enough in advance that you'll find my paintings perfect. I know that if they are exhibited they'll be a great success, but I couldn't be more indifferent to it since I know they are bad, I'm certain of it. ~ Claude Monet

Thanks to my work everything's going well; it's a great consolation. ~ Claude Monet

I must have flowers, always, and always. ~ Claude Monet

Perhaps it's true that I'm very hard on myself, but that's better than exhibiting mediocre work ... too few were satisfactory enough to trouble the public with. ~ Claude Monet

Ninety per cent of the theory of Impressionist painting is in ... Ruskin's Elements. ~ Claude Monet

Critic asks: 'And what, sir, is the subject matter of that painting?' - 'The subject matter, my dear good fellow, is the light. ~ Claude Monet

I waited for the idea to consolidate, for the grouping and composition of themes to settle themselves in my brain. ~ Claude Monet

I'm in fine fettle and fired with a desire to paint. ~ Claude Monet

I want to paint the air in which the bridge, the house and the boat are to be found - the beauty of the air around them, and that is nothing less than the impossible. ~ Claude Monet

I sometimes feel ashamed that I am devoting myself to artistic pursuits while so many of our people are suffering and dying for us. It's true that fretting never did any good. ~ Claude Monet

When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you - a tree, house, a field ... Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives your own naive impression of the scene before you. ~ Claude Monet

I am good at only two things, and those are gardening and painting. ~ Claude Monet

I would advise young artists to paint as they can, as long as they can, without being afraid of painting badly. ~ Claude Monet

I haven't many years left ahead of me and I must devote all my time to painting, in the hope of achieving something worthwhile in the end, something if possible that will satisfy me. ~ Claude Monet

I've only myself to blame for it, my impotence most of all and my weakness. If I do any good work now it will be only by chance. ~ Claude Monet

Think of me getting up before 6, I'm at work by 7 and I continue until 6.30 in the evening, standing up all the time, nine canvases. It's murderous ... ~ Claude Monet

I'm never finished with my paintings; the further I get, the more I seek the impossible and the more powerless I feel. ~ Claude Monet

The essence of the motif is the mirror of water, whose appearance alters at every moment. ~ Claude Monet

When I look at nature I feel as if I'll be able to paint it all, note it all down, and then you might as well forget it once you're working ... ~ Claude Monet

No, I'm not a great painter. Neither am I a great poet. ~ Claude Monet

I know that to paint the sea really well, you need to look at it every hour of every day in the same place so that you can understand its way in that particular spot; and that is why I am working on the same motifs over and over again, four or six times even. ~ Claude Monet

What is it that's taken hold of me, for me to carry on like this in relentless pursuit of something beyond my powers? ~ Claude Monet

Despite my extremely modest prices, dealers and art lovers are turning their backs on me. It is very depressing to see the lack of interest shown in an art object which has no market value. ~ Claude Monet

For me, the subject is of secondary importance: I want to convey what is alive between me and the subject. ~ Claude Monet

Zaandam has enough to paint for a lifetime. ~ Claude Monet

No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition. ~ Claude Monet

By the single example of this painter devoted to his art with such independence, my destiny as a painter opened out to me. ~ Claude Monet

I despise the opinion of the press and the so-called critics. ~ Claude Monet

It is better to have done something than to have been someone. ~ Claude Monet