When a figure painter executes a landscape he treats it as…

I don't belong to any school. I work in my corner. I admire Degas.

— Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

“Degas is one of the very few painters who have given the floor its true importance.”

— Paul Valéry

“Manet also had an argument with Degas, the end result being that they each returned paintings that they had previous given to each other.”

— Doris Lanier

A nude by Degas is chaste. But his women wash in tubs!...

— Paul Gauguin

Degas was obsessed by the art of classical ballet, because to him it said something about the human condition. He was not a balletomane…

— John Berger

What Degas called 'a way of seeing' must consequently bear a wide enough interpretation to include way of being, power, knowledge, and will.

— Paul Valery

“But to me, the argument is just semantics, an exercise in mental masturbation. True, Degas painted neither plein air nor spontaneously, but he had…

— Barbara A. Shapiro

The paintings that laughed at him merrily from the walls were like nothing he had ever seen or dreamed of. Gone were the flat,…

— Irving Stone

Just as a classical dancer repeats the same movements again and again, in order to achieve a greater perfection of line and balance, so…

— Kenneth Clark

Degas is a master of creating compositions that don't look composed.

— Max Liebermann

Only the bad artists of the nineteenth century were frightened by the invention of photography; the good ones all welcomed it and used it.…

— Kenneth Clark

The human quality Degas most admired was endurance.

— John Berger

I really became convinced I wanted to tell the story of the real-life model for the Degas sculpture 'Little Dancer Aged 14,' which was…

— Cathy Marie Buchanan

“I spit upon the dancers painted by Degas. I spit upon their short bodies, their stiff stays, their toes whereupon they spin like peg-tops,…

— W.B. Yeats

Sometimes it made him [Degas] furious that he could not find a chink in my armor, and there would be months when we just…

— Mary Cassatt