Paul Cezanne quotes

“My age and health will never allow me to realize the dream of art I've been pursuing all my life.”

— Paul Cezanne

“My nervous system is enfeebled, only work in oils can sustain me.”

— Paul Cezanne

“Two sittings a day of my models and I'm totally exhausted.”

— Paul Cezanne

“You say a new era in art is preparing; you sensed it coming; continue your studies without weakening. God will do the rest.”

— Paul Cezanne

“A puny body weakens the soul.”

— Paul Cezanne

“Doubtless there are things in nature which have not yet been seen. If an artist discovers them, he opens the way for his successors.”

— Paul Cezanne

“I am a pupil of Pissarro.”

— Paul Cezanne

“I ask you to pray for me, for once age has overtaken us, we find consolation only in religion.”

— Paul Cezanne

“I have nothing to hide in art. The initial force alone can bring anyone to the end he must attain.”

— Paul Cezanne

“I have sworn to die painting.”

— Paul Cezanne

“I lack the magnificent richness of color that animates nature.”

— Paul Cezanne

“I paint as if I were Rothschild.”

— Paul Cezanne

“I want to die painting.”

— Paul Cezanne

“I'll always be grateful to the public of intelligent amateurs.”

— Paul Cezanne

“Is art really the priesthood that demands the pure in heart who belong to it wholly?”

— Paul Cezanne

“Is it the factitious and the conventional that most surely succeed on earth and in the course of life?”

— Paul Cezanne

“It is impossible for emotion not to come on us in thinking of that time now flowed away.”

— Paul Cezanne

“One does not substitute oneself for the past, one merely adds to it a new link.”

— Paul Cezanne

“Optics, developing in us through study, teach us to see.”

— Paul Cezanne

“People think how a sugar basin has no physiognomy, no soul. But it changes every day.”

— Paul Cezanne

“Pure drawing is an abstraction. Drawing and colour are not distinct, everything in nature is coloured.”

— Paul Cezanne

“The artist makes things concrete and gives them individuality.”

— Paul Cezanne

“The clear French landscape is as pure as a verse of Racine.”

— Paul Cezanne

“The painter must enclose himself within his work; he must respond not with words, but with paintings.”

— Paul Cezanne

“We must not be content to memorize the beautiful formulas of our illustrious predecessors. Let us go out and study beautiful nature.”

— Paul Cezanne

“With a painter's temperament, all that's needed are the means of expression sufficient to be intelligible to the wide public.”

— Paul Cezanne