Photography Quotes by Edgar Degas

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

— Edgar Degas

The air we see in the paintings of the old masters is never the air we breathe.

— Edgar Degas

Even in front of nature one must compose.

— Edgar Degas

Art is vice. One does not wed it, one rapes it.

— Edgar Degas

What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming.

— Edgar Degas

Instantaneity is photography.

— Edgar Degas

Women can never forgive me; they hate me, they feel that I am disarming them. I show them without their coquetry.

— Edgar Degas

In painting you must give the idea of the true by means of the false.

— 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 I had…

— Edgar Degas

Great patience is called for on the hard path that I have entered on.

— Edgar Degas

There is too much talk and gossip; pictures are apparently made, like stock-market prices, by competition of people eager for profits... All this traffic…

— Edgar Degas

What is certain is that setting a piece of nature in place and drawing it are two very different things.

— Edgar Degas

I should like to be famous and unknown.

— Edgar Degas

Art is really a battle.

— Edgar Degas

A picture is an artificial work, outside nature. It calls for as much cunning as the commission of a crime.

— Edgar Degas