Эдгар Дега цитаты

„Красивые вещи делаются бессознательно.“

—  Эдгар Дега

„У всех есть талант в 25. Трудность состоит в том, чтобы иметь его в 50.“

—  Эдгар Дега

„Всякое искусство есть умение жертвовать.“

—  Эдгар Дега

„Живопись требует небольшой тайны, некоторой неопределённости, некоторой фантазии. Когда вы вкладываете совершенно ясное значение, людям становится скучно.“

—  Эдгар Дега

„Молодая девушка обязательно должна дождаться мужчину своей жизни. Конечно, за это время она вполне может выйти замуж.“

—  Эдгар Дега

„Только когда он больше не знает, что делает, художник может сделать что-то хорошее.“

—  Эдгар Дега

„Слишком уж много кругом шума. Можно подумать, что картины делаются, как биржевые цены, в сутолоке стремления к наживе и что художники нуждаются в чужом уме и идеях соседа, чтобы что-нибудь создать, точно так же как дельцы нуждаются в чужих капиталах, чтобы заработать деньги. Вся эта суета горячит ум и искажает верность суждения.“

—  Эдгар Дега

„Oh! Women can never forgive me. They hate me, they can feel that I ‘m disarming them. I show them without their coquetry, in the states of animals cleaning themselves… …I'm sure of it; they see me as the enemy. Fortunately, since if they did like me, that would be the end of me.“

—  Edgar Degas

In Degas by Himself, Drawings, Paintings, Writings, ed. Richard Kendall 2000, p. 299
quotes, undated

„Drawing is not what you see but what you must make others see.“

—  Edgar Degas

posthumous quotes

„Art is vice. You don't marry it legitimately, you rape it.“

—  Edgar Degas

posthumous quotes

„Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.“

—  Edgar Degas

Quoted in Artists on Art: From the XIV to the XX Century, ed. Robert Goldwater (Pantheon, 1945)
quotes, undated

„I should like to be famous and unknown.“

—  Edgar Degas

Je voudrais être illustre et inconnu.
Degas said this to Henri Rouart, as cited by Antoine Terrasse, in Degas (Chartwell Books, 1982)
quotes, undated

„Apart from my heart, I feel everything grows old in me. Even my heart has something artificial. It has been sewn by the dancers in a soft, pink satin purse like their shoes.“

—  Edgar Degas

Quote in Degas' letter to the sculptor Paul-Albert Bartolomé, January 1886; as cited in 'Performing Fine Arts: Dance as a Source of Inspiration in Impressionism, by Johannis Tsoumas http://rupkatha.com/dance-in-impressionism/
1876 - 1895

„A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people.“

—  Edgar Degas

quote from Georges Jeanniot, in Souvenirs sur Degas (Memories of Degas, 1933)
quotes, undated

„Painting is not very difficult when you don't know how; but when you know, oh! then, it's another matter.“

—  Edgar Degas

posthumous quotes

„There is a kind of success that is indistinguishable from panic.“

—  Edgar Degas

Quoted by Daniel Halévy, Degas Parle (1960) [My Friend Degas, trans. and ed. Mina Curtiss, Wesleyan University Press, 1964], p. 119
quotes, undated

„Make a drawing. Start it all over again, trace it. Start it and trace it again.“

—  Edgar Degas

posthumous quotes

„I put it [a still life of a pear, made by Manet there [on the wall, next to Ingres' painting 'Jupiter'], for a pear like that would overthrow any god.“

—  Edgar Degas

remark in a conversation with the writer Moore, ca. 1875; as quoted in The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe, Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 117
1855 - 1875

„I always suspect an artist who is successful before he is dead.“

—  Edgar Degas

John Murray Gibbon, Pagan Love (1922), ch. xiv
Misattributed