Edgar Degas

Drawing is your understanding of form.

— Edgar Degas

Art is really a battle.

— Edgar Degas

“Success! Success! The enemy of progress!”

— Edgar Degas

I would like to be famous but unknown.

— Edgar Degas

The true traveler never arrives.

— Edgar Degas

I should like to be famous and unknown.

— Edgar Degas

What a horrible thing yellow is.

— Edgar Degas

Instantaneity is photography.

— Edgar Degas

Muses work all day long and then at night get together and dance.

— Edgar Degas

The air you breathe in a picture is not necessarily the same as the air out of doors.

— Edgar Degas

The Dance instills in you something that sets you apart. Something heroic and remote.

— Edgar Degas

We were created to look at one another, weren't we?

— Edgar Degas

There are some women who should barely be spoken to; they should only be caressed.

— Edgar Degas

Realism is more important than the sentiment of the picture.

— Edgar Degas

I'm glad I haven't found my style yet. I'd be bored to death.

— Edgar Degas

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

— Edgar Degas

And even this heart of mine has something artificial. The dancers have sewn it into a bag of pink satin, pink satin…

— Edgar Degas

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

— Edgar Degas

The frame is the pimp of painting; it enhances it, but it must never shine at the painting's expense.

— Edgar Degas

The secret is to follow the advice the masters give you in their works while doing something different from them.

— Edgar Degas

I would have been in mortal misery all my life for fear my wife might say, 'That's a pretty little thing,' after…

— Edgar Degas

I really have a lot of stuff in my head; if only there were insurance companies for that as there are for…

— Edgar Degas

Make portraits of people in typical, familiar poses, being sure above all to give their faces the same kind of expression as…

— Edgar Degas

It seems to me that today if the artist wishes to be serious... he must once more sink himself in solitude.

— Edgar Degas

Hitherto the nude has always been represented in poses which presuppose an audience. But my women are simple, honest creatures who are…

— Edgar Degas

I felt so insufficiently equipped, so unprepared, so weak, and at the same time it seemed to me that my reflections on…

— Edgar Degas

I have been, or seemed, hard with everyone because I was carried away by a sort of brutality born of my distrust…

— Edgar Degas

Art critic! Is that a profession? When I think we are stupid enough, we painters, to solicit those people's compliments and to…

— Edgar Degas

Only two of my personalities are schizophrenic, but one of them is paranoid and the other one is out to get him.…

— Edgar Degas

What use is my mind? Granted that it enables me to hail a bus and to pay my fare. But once I…

— Edgar Degas

The museums are here to teach the history of art and something more as well, for, if they stimulate in the weak…

— Edgar Degas

If I were in the government I would have a brigade of policemen assigned to keeping an eye on people who paint…

— Edgar Degas

It seems to me that today, if the artist wishes to be serious - to cut out a little original niche for…

— Edgar Degas

My art, what do you want to say about it? Do you think you can explain the merits of a picture to…

— Edgar Degas

The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he must make others see. Only when he no longer knows what…

— Edgar Degas

I want to be famous but unknown!

— Edgar Degas

I don't admit that a woman draws that well!

— Edgar Degas

One does not marry art. One ravishes it.

— Edgar Degas

“Art is vice. You don't wed it, you rape it.”

— Edgar Degas

The frame is the reward of the artist.

— Edgar Degas