Charles Picart Le Doux

"Some want painting to "amuse" them; it was not to improvise fairground attractions that X-rays were discovered."

"Painting doesn't have to be crazy to be good."

"It is easier to surprise than to remember."

"Being honest in art is the surest way to be exceptional."

"A definition of pictorial art: "Life united with style.""

"Originality at all costs has been as harmful to painting for thirty years as the Ecole des Beaux-Arts has always been."

"You have to be yourself; not everyone is a Michelangelo or a Mignard."

"How is it that painting the only art form that any ignorant person allows himself to judge?"

"To seduce most writers, painting must be literary, that is to say, on the borders of the bad."

"In a world where killers know their craft so well, it probably doesn't matter if artists ignore theirs."

"Life has only one excuse: the dream."

"It is necessary in our time to brave the ridiculous to be honest."

"A revolutionary painting is not necessarily a revolting painting."

"Success is usually the exploitation of a weakness."

"Painters know what painting really is, but few admit it."

"Our era has believed that talent is about finding new ways of expression; we take appearance for reality."

"Honesty is the luxury of patients."

"There are times when, to appear original, it is not enough to be."

"The tragedy of modern life is not the harshness of the struggle, but its mediocrity."

"We do not prepare for the future by destroying the past, but by continuing it."

"Each painter really loves only one painting, the one he would like to make."