Top 100 Claude Monet Quotes
#1. 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
#2. What could be said about me ... a man to whom only his painting matters? And of course his garden and his flowers as well.
Claude Monet
#3. 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
#4. It is better to have done something than to have been someone.
Claude Monet
#5. It goes without saying that I will do anything at any price to pull myself out of a situation like this [rejection] so that I can start work immediately on my next Salon picture and ensure that such a thing should not happen again.
Claude Monet
#6. When it is dark, it seems to me as if I were dying, and I can't think any more.
Claude Monet
#7. What I need most of all is color, always, always.
Claude Monet
#9. 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
#10. I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.
Claude Monet
#11. One day I am satisfied, the next day I find it all bad; still I hope that some day I will find some of them good.
Claude Monet
#12. 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
#13. The effect of sincerity is to give one's work the character of a protest. The painter, being concerned only with conveying his impression, simply seeks to be himself and no one else.
Claude Monet
#14. Nothing in the whole world is of interest to me but my painting and my flowers.
Claude Monet
#15. 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
#16. I'm working hard with more determination than ever. My success at the Salon led to my selling several paintings and since your absence I have made 800 francs; I hope, when I have contracts with more dealers, it will be better still.
Claude Monet
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. I'm in a foul mood as I'm making stupid mistakes ... This morning I lost beyond repair a painting with which I had been happy, having done about twenty sessions on it; it had to be thoroughly scraped away ... what a rage I was in!
Claude Monet
#20. 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
#21. One is too taken up with all that one sees and hears in Paris, however strong one is, and what I do here [in Etretat] will at least have the merit of being unlike anyone else, at least I believe so, because it will simply be the expression of what I, and only I, have felt.
Claude Monet
#22. 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
#23. 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
#24. Listening only to my instincts, I discovered superb things.
Claude Monet
#25. My only desire is an intimate infusion with nature, and the only fate I wish is to have worked and lived in harmony with her laws.
Claude Monet
#26. Now I really feel the landscape, I can be bold and include every tone of blue and pink: it's enchanting, it's delicious.
Claude Monet
#27. The light constantly changes, and that alters the atmosphere and beauty of things every minute.
Claude Monet
#28. For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life - the light and the air which vary continually. For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value.
Claude Monet
#29. Light is the most important person in the picture.
Claude Monet
#31. 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
#32. I still don't know where I am going to sleep tomorrow.
Claude Monet
#33. My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece
Claude Monet
#34. Thanks to my work everything's going well; it's a great consolation.
Claude Monet
#35. I had so much fire in me and so many plans ...
Claude Monet
#36. 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
#37. No, I'm not a great painter. Neither am I a great poet.
Claude Monet
#38. My work is always better when I am alone and follow my own impressions.
Claude Monet
#39. I've always refused requests even from friends to employ a technique I know nothing about.
Claude Monet
#40. All of a sudden I had the revelation of how enchanting my pond was.
Claude Monet
#41. All I did was to look at what the universe showed me, to let my brush bear witness to it.
Claude Monet
#42. 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
#43. 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
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. Zaandam has enough to paint for a lifetime.
Claude Monet
#49. Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.
Claude Monet
#50. It's enough to drive you crazy, trying to depict the weather, the atmosphere, the ambience.
Claude Monet
#51. I can no longer work outside because of the intensity of the light.
Claude Monet
#52. You might perhaps like to see the few canvases I was able to save from the bailiffs and the rest, since I thought you might be so good as to help me a little, as I am in quite a desperate state, and the worst is that I can no longer even work.
Claude Monet
#53. 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
#54. I've been working so hard that I'm exhausted ... I feel I won't be able to do without a few weeks' rest, so I'm going off to see the sea.
Claude Monet
#56. 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
#57. If only the weather would improve, there'd be hope of some work, but every day brings rain.
Claude Monet
#58. One can do something if one can see and understand it ...
Claude Monet
#59. Apart from painting and gardening, I'm not good at anything.
Claude Monet
#61. Most people think I paint fast. I paint very slowly.
Claude Monet
#62. I think only of my painting, and if I were to drop it, I think I'd go crazy.
Claude Monet
#63. I let a good many mistakes show through when fixing my sensations. It will always be the same and this is what makes me despair.
Claude Monet
#64. It is a tragedy that we live in a world where physical courage is so common, and moral courage is so rare.
Claude Monet
#65. Without the fog, London would not be a beautiful city. It is fog that gives it its magnificent amplitude ... its regular and massive blocks become grandiose in that mysterious mantle.
Claude Monet
#66. 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
#67. I am very depressed and deeply disgusted with painting. It is really a continual torture.
Claude Monet
#68. 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
#69. 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
#70. The real subject of every painting is light.
Claude Monet
#71. I still have a lot of pleasure doing them, but as time goes by I come to appreciate more clearly which paintings are good and which should be discarded.
Claude Monet
#72. No one but myself knows the anxiety I go through and the trouble I give myself ...
Claude Monet
#73. I've done what I could as a painter and that seems to me to be sufficient. I don't want to be compared to the great masters of the past, and my painting is open to criticism; that's enough.
Claude Monet
#74. Techniques vary, art stays the same; it is a transposition of nature at once forceful and sensitive.
Claude Monet
#75. It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.
Claude Monet
#76. I insist upon 'doing it alone' ... I have always worked better alone and from my own impressions.
Claude Monet
#77. I want the unobtainable. Other artists paint a bridge, a house, a boat, and that's the end. They are finished. I want to paint the air which surrounds the bridge, the house, the boat, the beauty of the air in which these objects are located, and that is nothing short of impossible.
Claude Monet
#78. Nature won't be summoned to order and won't be kept waiting. It must be caught, well caught.
Claude Monet
#80. My eyes were finally opened and I understood nature. I learned at the same time to love it.
Claude Monet
#81. 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
#82. I say that whoever claims to have finished a canvas is terribly arrogant.
Claude Monet
#83. Colors pursue me like a constant worry. They even worry me in my sleep.
Claude Monet
#84. 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
#85. 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
#86. 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
#87. 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
#88. Never, even as a child, would I bend to a rule.
Claude Monet
#89. 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
#90. Impression - I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it ... and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape.
Claude Monet
#91. It seems to me that when I see nature I see it ready-made, completely written - but then, try to do it!
Claude Monet
#92. I will bring lots of studies back with me so I can work on some big things at home.
Claude Monet
#93. It is difficult to stop in time because one gets carried away. But I have that strength; it is the only strength I have.
Claude Monet
#94. For almost two months now I've been struggling away with no result.
Claude Monet
#95. 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
#97. Work is nearly always a torture. If I could find something else I would be much happier, because I could use this other interest as a form of relaxation. Now I cannot relax.
Claude Monet
#98. 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
#99. 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
#100. I'm knocked out, I've never felt so physically and mentally exhausted, I'm quite stupid with it and long only for bed; but I am happy ...
Claude Monet
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