Auguste Rodin

The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation.

— Auguste Rodin

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

— Auguste Rodin

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need.

— Auguste Rodin

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need.

— Auguste Rodin

To produce good sculpture it is not necessary to copy the works of antiquity; it is necessary first of all to regard the works of nature, and to see in those of the classics only the method by which they have interpreted nature.

— Auguste Rodin

Nobody does good to men with .

— Auguste Rodin

Why then should I clothe him to make him look ridiculous in the foolish masculine fashions of his time? There is nothing more banal than these statues of recent notabilities, to be seen in every big city of Europe, masquerading as tailors' models of their ugly period. Man's naked form on the other hand belongs to no particular moment in history ; it is eternal, and can be looked upon with joy by the people of all ages.

— Auguste Rodin

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

— Auguste Rodin

The sculptor must learn to reproduce the surface, which means all that vibrates on the surface: spirit, soul, love, passion — life. ... Sculpture is thus the art of hollows and mounds, not of smoothness, or even polished planes.

— Auguste Rodin

Barye... did not teach us much ; he was always worried and tired when he came, and always told us that it was very good.

— Auguste Rodin

Slowness is a beauty

— Auguste Rodin

Gsell: What astonishes me, is that your way is so different from that of other sculptors. They prose the model. Instead of that, you wait till a model has instinctively or accidentally taken an Interesting pose, and thon you reproduce It. Instead of your giving orders to the model, the model gives orders to you.

— Auguste Rodin

In art a thing is beautiful whenever it has character. Character — this is the intense truth of any natural spectacle, whether beautiful or ugly. You may even call it a double truth. For it is the inner essence expressed by the outer appearance. It is the soul, the sentiment, the idea that shines out through the features of a fare, the pose and action of a human body, the tones of a skym the line of a horizon.

— Auguste Rodin

Now to the great artist, everything in nature has character.

— Auguste Rodin

I obey nature, I never presume to command her. The first principal in art is to copy what one sees.

— Auguste Rodin

I admit, that the commonplace man can never, by copying, produce a masterpiece; he notes every detail but he does not really see - the artist penetrates below the surface into the very heart of nature; for him everything is beautiful because beauty in art consists of character.

— Auguste Rodin

Drawing is but a means to an end. One imagines that drawing can be beautiful-it is not the lines which are beautiful, but what they signify, the sentiments which they translate. In reality, there is no such thing as beauty in drawing, or color beauty lies alone in revelation of truth.

— Auguste Rodin

The artist who parades his drawing, the writer who calls attention to his style, is like the farmer who devotes his energies to polishing farm implements and never uses them.

— Auguste Rodin

It is too evident that if the drawing is bad, the color false, the deepest emotion must fail to express itself.

— Auguste Rodin

No sudden inspiration can replace the long years of arduous labor necessary to train the eye to observe, the hand to reproduce.

— Auguste Rodin

If in looking at a picture you have been profoundly moved by it, but have not noticed the color or drawing, you may be sure that they are technically perfect.

— Auguste Rodin

An artist must possess consummate technique in order to make us forget it.

— Auguste Rodin

The great difficulty and crowning glory of art is to paint, to draw, to write, naturally and simply.

— Auguste Rodin

Painting, literature, music, are more closely allied than the public usually admit. They are merely different means of expression.

— Auguste Rodin

A critic recently denounced my Victor Hugo, declaring the treatment belonged not to sculpture but to music. He said it reminded him of a symphony by Beethoven. Heaven grant that he spoke the truth!

— Auguste Rodin

For to me, this word Art, in its largest sense, signifies those who take pleasure in their work... Artist-carpenters who adjust with joy dovetails and mortises; artist-masons who handle lovingly their trowels; artist-cab drivers, proud of treating their horses humanely-what an ideal state of society that would be.

— Auguste Rodin

To-day, artists and those who love artists seem like fossils. Imagine a megatherium or a diplodocus stalking the streets of Paris! There you have the impression that we must make upon our contemporaries. Ours is an epoch of engineers and of manufacturers, not one of artists.

— Auguste Rodin

Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which nature herself is animated.

— Auguste Rodin

The search in modem life is for utility; the endeavor is to improve existence materially. Every day, science invents new processes for the feeding, clothing, or transportation of man; she manufactures cheaply inferior products in order to give adulterated luxuries to the greatest number — though it is true that she has also made real improvements in all that ministers to our daily wants. But it is no longer a question of spirit, of thought, of dreams. Art is dead.

— Auguste Rodin

Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit by which Nature herself is animated. It is the joy of the intellect which sees clearly into the Universe and which recreates it, with conscientious vision. Art is the most sublime mission of man, since it is the expression of thought seeking to understand the world and to make it understood.

— Auguste Rodin

But to-day, mankind believes itself able to do without Art. It does not wish to meditate, to contemplate, to dream; it wishes to enjoy physically. The heights and the depths of truth are indifferent to it; it is content to satisfy its bodily appetites. Mankind to-day is brutish — it is not the stuff of which artists are made.

— Auguste Rodin

I am not at their orders, but at those of Nature! My confreres doubtless have their reasons for working as you have said. But in thus doing violence to nature and treating human beings like puppets, they run the risk of producing lifeless and artificial work...

— Auguste Rodin

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.But, after all, the only principle in Art is to copy what you see. Dealers in esthetics to the contrary, every other method is fatal. There is no recipe for improving nature.

— Auguste Rodin

Now, to the great artist, everything in nature has character; for the unswerving directness of his observation searches out the hidden meaning of all things. And that which is considered ugly in nature often presents more character than that which is termed beautiful, because in the contractions of a sickly countenance, in the lines of a vicious face, in all deformity, in all decay, the inner truth shines forth more clearly than in features that are regular and healthy.

— Auguste Rodin

To any artist, worthy of the name, all in nature is beautiful, because his eyes, fearlessly accepting all exterior truth, read there, as in an open book, all the inner truth.He has only to look into a human face in order to read there the soul within — not a feature deceives him; hypocrisy is as transparent as sincerity — the line of a forehead, the least lifting of a brow, the flash of an eye, reveal to him all the secrets of a heart.

— Auguste Rodin

Now color — it is to this remark that I wished to lead — is the flower of fine modelling. These two qualities always accompany each other, and it is these qualities which give to every masterpiece of the sculptor the radiant appearance of living flesh.

— Auguste Rodin

Of course, there is drawing in art as there is style in literature. Style that is mannered, that strains after effect, is bad. No style is good except that which effaces itself in order to concentrate all the attention of the reader upon the subject treated, upon the emotion rendered.

— Auguste Rodin

The artist who parades his drawing, the writer who wishes to attract praise to his style, resemble the soldier who plumes himself on his unif onn but refuses to go into battle, or the farmer who polishes the ploughshare instead of driving it into the earth.

— Auguste Rodin

If the artist only reproduces superficial features as photography does, if he copies the lineaments of a face exactly, without reference to character, he deserves no admiration. The resemblance which he ought to obtain is that of the soul; that alone matters; it is that which the sculptor or painter should seek beneath the mask of features.

— Auguste Rodin

When I was quite young, as far back as I remember, I drew, but the gift is nothing without the will to make it worth while. The artist must have the patience of water that eats away the rock drop by drop.

— Auguste Rodin

Michelangelo, revealed me to myself, revealed to me the truth of forms. I went to Florence to find what I possessed in Paris and elsewhere, but it is he who taught me this.

— Auguste Rodin

My principles are the laws of experience.

— Auguste Rodin

I am not a rhetorician, but a man of action.

— Auguste Rodin

The streets of Paris, with their shops of old furniture, etchings, and works of art, are a veritable museum, far less tiring than official museums, and from which one imbibes just as much as one can.

— Auguste Rodin

Admiration, is a joy daily kindled afresh... I talk out of the -fullness of life; it belongs to me in a sense larger than that of ownership.

— Auguste Rodin

Were this thoroughly understood, industrial art would be entirely revolutionized — industrial art, that barbarous term, an art which concerns itself with commerce and profit.

— Auguste Rodin

Yes, they are beautiful... The shirt, the blouse are garments the folds of which yield simple planes and effects that, rightly rendered, are those of true sculpture. But there is something better still, and that is sackcloth. If I had clothed my 'Burghers of Calais' in sackcloth, they would certainly be more beautiful. I did not dare to. Some one else will do this and will succeed. It is sufficient to express an idea and leave it to its destiny.

— Auguste Rodin

One can never do anything so beautiful as nature.

— Auguste Rodin

I sacrificed to the mania of the age, which is to overload things. My modeling is there, the eloquence of the gesture also. The rest would only spoil the essential things. It is a stroke of genius. I am going to write to the under-secretary of state that my monument is ready.

— Auguste Rodin

The biblical times have come back again, the great invasions of the Medes and the Persians. Has the world, then, reached the point where it deserves to be punished for the egotistical epicureanism in which it has slumbered?

— Auguste Rodin

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I do not need.

— Auguste Rodin

Man's naked form belongs to no particular moment in history; it is eternal, and can be looked upon with joy by the people of all ages.

— Auguste Rodin

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

— Auguste Rodin

The artist must learn the difference between the appearance of an object and the interpretation of this object through his medium. The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation.

— Auguste Rodin

In art, immorality cannot exist. Art is always sacred even when it takes for a subject the worst excesses of desire; since it has in view only the sincerity of observation, it cannot debase itself. A true work of art is always noble, even when it translates the stirrings of the brute, for at that moment, the artist who has produced it had as his only objective, the most conscientious rendering possible of the impression he has felt.

— Auguste Rodin

Patience is also a form of action.

— Auguste Rodin

You would not believe my suffering... Death would be sweeter... I can't go another day without seeing you. Atrocious madness, it's the end. I won't be able to work any more. Malevolent goddess! And yet I love you furiously.

— Auguste Rodin

I know very well that one must fight, for one is often in contradiction to the spirit of the age.

— Auguste Rodin

There are unknown forces in nature; when we give ourselves wholly to her, without reserve, she lends them to us; she shows us these forms, which our watching eyes do not see, which our intelligence does not understand or suspect.

— Auguste Rodin