Auguste Rodin Quotes

Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.

The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live. Be a man before being an artist!

I grant you that the artist does not see Nature as she appears to the vulgar, because his emotion reveals to him the hidden truths beneath appearances.

The only principle in art is to copy what you see. Dealers in aesthetics to the contrary, every other method is fatal.

Recently I have taken to isolating limbs, the torso. Why am I blamed for it? Why is the head allowed and not portions of the body? Every part of the human figure is expressive.

In front of the model I work with the same will to reproduce truth as if I were making a portrait. I do not correct nature, I incorporate myself into it; it directs me. I can only work with a model. The sight of human forms nourishes and comforts me.

What is drawing? Not once in describing the shape of the mass did I shift my eyes from the model. Why? Because I wanted to be sure that nothing evaded my grasp of it… My objective is to test to what extent my hands already feel what my eyes see.

There should be no argument in regard to morality in art. There is no morality in nature.

The artist enriches the soul of humanity. The artist delights people with a thousand different shades of feeling.

In short, Beauty is everywhere. It is not that she is lacking to our eye, but our eyes which fail to perceive her. Beauty is character and expression. Well, there is nothing in nature which has more character than the human body. In its strength and its grace it evokes the most varied images. One moment it resembles a flower: the bending torso is the stalk; the breasts, the head, and the splendor of the hair answer to the blossoming of the corolla. The next moment it recalls the pliant creeper, or the proud and upright sapling.

Mere exactitude, of which photography and moulage [life casting] are the lowest forms, does not inspire feelings.

People say I think too much about women, yet, after all what is there more important to think about?