Edgar Degas

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

Drawing is the artists most direct and spontaneous expression. A species of writing it reveals better than does painting his true personality.

What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming.

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.

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

The air we see in the paintings of the old masters is never the air we breathe.

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.

Art is not what you see but what you make others see.

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

Drawing is not the same as form it is a way of seeing form.

The frame is the reward of the artist.

What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists One understands absolutely nothing and its charming.

The frame is the pimp of painting it enhances it but it must never shine at the paintings expense.

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

In painting you must give the idea of the true by means of the false.

There is no such thing as Intelligence; one has intelligence of this or that. One must have intelligence only for what one is doing.

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

Realism is more important than the sentiment of the picture.

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

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.

Drawing is not what one sees but what one can make others see.

Art is vice. You don't marry it legitimately, you rape it.

It is peoples movement that consoles us. If the leaves of a tree did not move how sad would be the tree and so should we.

One must do the same subject over again ten times, a hundred times. In art nothing must resemble an accident, not even movement.