Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Paul Cezanne, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Paul Cezanne quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 149 Paul Cezanne quotes for you to read and share.

I paint as if I were Rothschild. -- Paul Cezanne

There is no model, there is only color. -- Paul Cezanne

Here, on the river's verge, I could be busy for months without changing my place, simply leaning a little more to right or left. -- Paul Cezanne

We live in a rainbow of chaos. -- Paul Cezanne

See how the light tenderly love the apricots, it takes them over completely, enters into their pulp, light them from all sides! But it is miserly with the peaches and light only one side of them. -- Paul Cezanne

The sun penetrates me soundlessly like a distant friend that stirs up my laziness, fertilizes it. We bring forth life. -- Paul Cezanne

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

It is not about painting life, it is about making painting alive. -- Paul Cezanne

I wish to die painting. -- Paul Cezanne

Is it the factitious and the conventional that most surely succeed on earth and in the course of life? -- Paul Cezanne

You have no idea how life-giving it is to find around one a youth that agrees not to bury one on the spot. -- Paul Cezanne

Here on the edge of the river, the motifs are very plentiful, the same subject seen from a different angle gives a subject for study of the highest interest and so varied that I think I could be occupied for months without changing my place, simply bending a little more to the right or left. -- Paul Cezanne

Everything vanishes, falls apart, doesn't it? Nature is always the same but nothing in her that appears to us lasts. Our art must render the thrill of her permanence, along with her elements, the appearance of all her changes. It must give us a taste of her Eternity. -- Paul Cezanne

The artist must scorn all judgment that is not based on an intelligent observation of character. He must beware of the literary spirit which so often causes a painting to deviate from its true path - the concrete study of nature - to lose itself all too long in intangible speculations. -- 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

You must think. The eye is not enough; it needs to think as well. -- Paul Cezanne

It's not just about looking and copying, it's about feeling too -- Paul Cezanne

When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art. -- Paul Cezanne

Nature is more depth than surface, the colours are the expressions on the surface of this depth; they rise up from the roots of the world. -- Paul Cezanne

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

I wished to copy nature. I could not. But I was satisfied when I discovered the sun, for instance, could not be reproduced, but only represented by something else. -- Paul Cezanne

The painter unfolds that which has not been seen. -- Paul Cezanne

Under this fine rain I breathe in the innocence of the world. I feel coloured by the nuances of infinity. At this moment I am one with my picture. We are an iridescent chaos ... -- Paul Cezanne

Knowledge of the means to express our emotion is essential- and is acquired only after a very long experience. -- Paul Cezanne

The clear French landscape is as pure as a verse of Racine. -- Paul Cezanne

What I am trying to translate to you is more mysterious, it is entwined in the very roots of being, in the implacable source of sensations. -- Paul Cezanne

Pure drawing is an abstraction. -- Paul Cezanne

There is no such thing as an amateur artist as different from a professional artist. There is only good art and bad art. -- Paul Cezanne

If I were called upon to define briefly the word Art, I should call it the reproduction of what the senses preceive in nature, seen through the veil of the soul. -- Paul Cezanne

One must see one's model correctly and experience it in the right way; and furthermore express oneself forcibly and with distinction. -- Paul Cezanne

I should have wished to possess the intellectual equilibrium that characterizes you and permits you to achieve without fail the desired end ... Chance has not favoured me with an equal self-assurance, it is the only regret I have about things of this earth. -- Paul Cezanne

The Louvre is a good book to consult, but it must only be an intermediary. The real and immense study that must be taken up is the manifold picture of nature. -- Paul Cezanne

Time and reflection change the sight little by little 'till we come to understand. -- Paul Cezanne

I'll always be grateful to the public of intelligent amateurs. -- Paul Cezanne

When the color achieves richness, the form attains its fullness also. -- Paul Cezanne

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

If I think, everything is lost. -- Paul Cezanne

Tell me, do you think I'm going mad? I sometimes wonder, you know. -- Paul Cezanne

Two sittings a day of my models and I'm totally exhausted. -- Paul Cezanne

All the theories mess you up inside. -- Paul Cezanne

If you see a red tree, paint it bright red. -- Paul Cezanne

If isolation tempers the strong, it is the stumbling-block of the uncertain. -- Paul Cezanne

An art which isn't based on feeling isn't an art at all. -- Paul Cezanne

Painting, like any art, comprises a technique, a workmanlike handling of material, but the accuracy of a tone and the fictitious combination of effects depend entirely on the choice made by the artist. -- Paul Cezanne

I advance all of my canvas at one time. -- Paul Cezanne

The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution. -- Paul Cezanne

Yes, a bunch of carrots, observed directly, painted simply in the personal way one sees it, worth more than the Ecole's everlasting slices of buttered bread, that tobacco-juice painting, slavishly done by the book? The day is coming when a single original carrot will give birth to a revolution. -- Paul Cezanne

Chatter about art is almost always useless. -- Paul Cezanne

One can do good things without being very much of a harmonist or a colourist. It is sufficient to have a sense of art - and this sense is doubtless the horror of the bourgeois. -- Paul Cezanne

Perhaps I was born too early. I was more the painter of your generation than of mine. -- Paul Cezanne

The painter must enclose himself within his work; he must respond not with words, but with paintings. -- Paul Cezanne

I cannot attain the intensity that is unfolded before my senses. I have not the magnificent richness of colouring that animates nature. -- 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

It took me 40 years to find out that painting is not sculpture ... -- Paul Cezanne

Everything is about to disappear. You've got to hurry up if you still want to see things. -- Paul Cezanne

You have to hurry up if you want to see something, everything disappears. -- Paul Cezanne

Art is a harmony parallel with nature -- Paul Cezanne

Everything in nature is formed upon the sphere, the cone and the cylinder. One must learn to paint these simple figures and then one can do all that he may wish. -- Paul Cezanne

Whoever the master is whom you prefer, this must only be a directive for you. Otherwise you will never be anything but an imitator. -- Paul Cezanne

When a picture isn't realized, you pitch it in the fire and start another one! -- Paul Cezanne

It's so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas. -- Paul Cezanne

Surely, a single bunch of carrots painted naively, just as we personally see it, is worth all the endless banalities of the Schools, all those dreary pictures concocted out of tobacco juice according to time-honored formulas? -- Paul Cezanne

Is art really the priesthood that demands the pure in heart who belong to it wholly? -- Paul Cezanne

The approbation of others is a stimulus of which one must sometimes be wary. The feeling of one's own strength makes one modest. -- Paul Cezanne

Right now a moment of time is fleeting by! Capture its reality in paint! To do that we must put all else out of our minds. We must become that moment, make ourselves a sensitive recording plate ... Give the image of what we actually see, forgetting everything that has been seen before our time. -- Paul Cezanne

I am a pupil of Pissarro. -- Paul Cezanne

Optics, developing in us through study, teach us to see. -- Paul Cezanne

I owe you the truth in painting, and I will tell it to you. -- Paul Cezanne

Everything in nature takes its form from the sphere, the cone and the cylinder. -- Paul Cezanne

See nature in terms of the cone, the cylinder, and the sphere. -- Paul Cezanne

All pictures painted inside in the studio will never be as good as the things done outside. -- Paul Cezanne

To achieve progress nature alone counts, and the eye is trained through contact with her. It becomes concentric by looking and working. -- Paul Cezanne

I must be more sensible and realize that at my age, illusions are hardly permitted and they will always destroy me. -- Paul Cezanne

The most seductive thing about art is the personality of the artist himself. -- Paul Cezanne

Monet is only an eye, but my God, what an eye! -- Paul Cezanne

Right now a moment of time is passing by! ... We must become that moment. -- Paul Cezanne

People think how a sugar basin has no physiognomy, no soul. But it changes every day. -- Paul Cezanne

Design and color are not distinct and separate. As one paints, one draws. The more the colors harmonize, the more the design takes form. When color is at it's richest, form is at its fullest. -- Paul Cezanne

One is neither too scrupulous nor too sincere nor too submissive to nature; but one is more or less master of one's model, and, above all, of the means of expression. -- Paul Cezanne

Nature is the best instructor. -- Paul Cezanne

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

The world doesn't understand me and I don't understand the world, that's why I've withdrawn from it. -- Paul Cezanne

With an apple I will astonish Paris. -- Paul Cezanne

In order to make progress, there is only nature, and the eye is turned through contact with her. -- Paul Cezanne

The contour eludes me. -- Paul Cezanne

The Louvre is the book in which we learn to read. -- Paul Cezanne

A puny body weakens the soul. -- Paul Cezanne

A thousand painters ought to be killed yearly. Say what you like: I'm every inch a painter. -- Paul Cezanne

Fruits ... like having their portrait painted. They seem to sit there and ask your forgiveness for fading. Their thought is given off with their perfumes. They come with all their scents, they speak of the fields they have left, the rain which has nourished them, the daybreaks they have seen. -- Paul Cezanne

Talks on art are almost useless. The work which goes to bring progress in one's own subject is sufficient compensation for the incomprehension of imbeciles. -- Paul Cezanne

To paint is not to copy the object slavishly, it is to grasp a harmony among many relationships. -- Paul Cezanne

Shadow is a colour as light is, but less brilliant; light and shadow are only the relation of two tones. -- Paul Cezanne

I want to die painting. -- Paul Cezanne

I have sworn to die painting. -- Paul Cezanne

I'd like to combine melancholy and sunshine ... There's a sadness in Provence which no one has expressed ... I'd like to put reason in the grass and tears in the sky, like Poussin ... -- Paul Cezanne

Get to the heart of what is before you and continue to express yourself as logically as possible. -- Paul Cezanne

Genius is the ability to renew one's emotions in daily experience. -- Paul Cezanne

When I start thinking, all is lost. -- Paul Cezanne

I am still searching for the expression of those confused sensations that we bring with us at birth. -- Paul Cezanne

Don't be an art critic. Paint. There lies salvation. -- Paul Cezanne

My nervous system is very much weakened - nothing but painting in oil can keep me going. -- Paul Cezanne

It is necessary to introduce light vibrations, represented by reds and yellows, and a sufficient amount of blues, to obtain an airy feeling. -- Paul Cezanne

One had to immerse oneself in one's surroundings and intensely study nature or one's subject to understand how to recreate it. -- Paul Cezanne

The awareness of our own strength makes us modest. -- Paul Cezanne

Keep good company - that is, go to the Louvre. -- Paul Cezanne

Art first of all is optical. That's where the material of our art is: in what our eyes think. -- Paul Cezanne

My nervous system is enfeebled, only work in oils can sustain me. -- Paul Cezanne

I am beginning to consider myself stronger than all those around me, and you know that the good opinion I have of myself has only been reached after mature consideration. -- Paul Cezanne

There are two things in the painter, the eye and the mind; each of them should aid the other. -- Paul Cezanne

Michelangelo is a constructor, and Rafael an artist who, great as he is, is always limited by the model. When he tries to be thoughtful he falls below the niveau of his great rival. -- Paul Cezanne

Pure drawing is an abstraction. Drawing and colour are not distinct, everything in nature is coloured. -- Paul Cezanne

If I think, I am lost. -- Paul Cezanne

Pleasure must be found in study. -- Paul Cezanne

I am more a friend of art than a producer of painting. -- Paul Cezanne

For an Impressionist to paint from nature is not to paint the subject, but to realize sensations. -- Paul Cezanne

Studying the model and realizing it is sometimes very slow in coming for the artist. -- Paul Cezanne

Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one's sensations. -- Paul Cezanne

Treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything in proper perspective so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point. -- Paul Cezanne

I allow no one to touch me. -- Paul Cezanne

I could paint for a hundred years, a thousand years without stopping and I would still feel as though I knew nothing. -- Paul Cezanne

Sometimes I imagine colors as if they were living ideas, being of pure reason with which to communicate. Nature is not on the surface, it is deep down. -- Paul Cezanne

Light is a thing that cannot be reproduced, but must be represented by something else - by color. -- Paul Cezanne

I lack the magnificent richness of color that animates nature. -- Paul Cezanne

Taste is the best judge. It is rare. Art only addresses itself to an excessively small number of individuals. -- Paul Cezanne

I am not altogether displeased with the shirt-front. -- 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

Literature expresses itself by abstractions, whereas painting, by means of drawing and colour, gives concrete shape to sensations and perceptions. -- Paul Cezanne

All my compatriots are asses compared to me. -- Paul Cezanne

I am progressing very slowly, for nature reveals herself to me in very complex forms; and the progress needed is incessant. -- Paul Cezanne

The truth is in nature, and I shall prove it. -- Paul Cezanne

The landscape becomes human, becomes a thinking, living being within me. I become one with my picture ... we merge in an iridescent chaos. -- Paul Cezanne

I've come to the conclusion that it's not really possible to help others. -- Paul Cezanne

Painting is founded on the heart controlled by the head. -- Paul Cezanne

An optical impression is produced on our organs of sight which makes us classify as light, half-tone or quartertone, the surfaces represented by colour sensations. So that light does not exist for the painter. -- Paul Cezanne

I have to keep working, not to arrive at finish, which arouses the admiration of fools ... I must seek completion only for the pleasure of being truer and more knowing. -- Paul Cezanne

A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art. -- Paul Cezanne

The artist makes things concrete and gives them individuality. -- Paul Cezanne

To be sure an artist wishes to raise his standard intellectually as much as possible, but the man must remain in obscurity. Pleasure must be found in the studying. -- Paul Cezanne

Time and reflection ... modify, little by little, our vision, and at last comprehension comes to us. -- Paul Cezanne

The strong experience of nature ... is the necessary basis for all conception of art on which rests the grandeur and beauty of all future work. -- Paul Cezanne

The transposition that a painter makes with an original vision gives to the representation of nature a new interest. -- Paul Cezanne

I am a consciousness. The landscape thinks itself through me. -- Paul Cezanne

I am the primitive of the method I have invented. -- Paul Cezanne

It is impossible for emotion not to come on us in thinking of that time now flowed away. -- Paul Cezanne

I have not tried to reproduce nature; I have represented it. -- Paul Cezanne

The landscape thinks itself in me and I am its consciousness. -- Paul Cezanne

Painting is damned difficult - you always think you've got it, but you haven't. -- Paul Cezanne

There is no light painting or dark painting, but simply relations of tones. -- Paul Cezanne