French Poets

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

"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."

"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."

"And you think she's dead? | No. The day I mourned for her, | I did not distinguish funereal hanging drapes | nor did I see a coffin before his door. From"

"I think of my young colleagues who don't have the means to have their first poems printed. I'm going to reserve a sum [the one I received for the Nobel Prize] that will allow them to have their first notebooks of poems printed. I have already received a large amount of requests whose fulfillment would absorb the entire prize."

"It is I, who deceives the breeze | with my pretty heartbeats... | O women! Sometimes, I lure her in | to your beautiful radiant eyes; || Sometimes, I catch her: and I bow, | making her my prisoner, | Why He Caresses Your Little Face | with a caress . || I bring you, to moved ears, | – of your hair trembling – | The sigh that makes them red | with sweet words of love. || It is I, who for you I am the one who sums it up: | And I help you to dissemble | or your sly smile, | or tears ready to flow. From Il fan"

"We see sometimes, in the dark schools, | Kids who are always crying. | They go wild, the others in somersaults, | but they curl up in a song. | The strong say that they are maidens, | And the cunning call them innocent. | They are sweet, they give us toys; they will certainly not be traders...Quoted in: Gabriel D'Aubarède, The life and works of Sully Prudhomme, translation by Maria Luisa Spaziani, in The Nobel Prizes for Literature, vol. II, pp. 27-28."

"When a woman is truly chaste, she is also incorruptible; I will be less likely to believe in the moral failures of angelic women. (Thursday, October 2, C.E.[1862], p. 51)"

"I will come to a solution about the problem of time. When the infinite shows a hem of its garment, it casts its immense shadow over the problem; Then we grope, but it is a lost effort. (Saturday, October 4, C.E.[1862],, p. 52)"

"Pascal, I admire you, you are mine, I penetrate your thought as if I thought in you; magnanimous, deep sadness, deep as night; How it is full of faint distant lights! Be my teacher, adopt me; I suffer endlessly, I gravitate towards the truth, I never reach it. Have you really believed the revelation? (Sunday, October 5, C.E.[1862],, p. 53)"

"When one has delved into a philosophical problem, one must, somehow, step back like a painter in front of the picture and look at what he has produced. (Saturday, January 30, C.E.[1864],, p. 87)"

"Discourse on Virtue. Virtue does not promise anything, it merely takes pleasure in its own deeds. To courage he proposes trials of pain, and as a reward to life he offers the pure feeling of dignity. (Monday, February 1, C.E.[1864],, p. 92)"

"That Sully Prudhomme is a brilliant artist, a very delicate poet, is well known by those who have heard, with or without music, his famous Vase brisé. That he is a highly cultured thinker, a keen philosopher, is known to those who have compelled his ponderous volume on Expression in the Fine Arts. He did not, however, wish to keep his different faculties separate, contenting himself with writing now inspired verses and now rigorous reasoning; he also composed poems entitled The Destinies, Justice and Happiness with the heart of a poet and the mind of a philosopher. This part of his work is the most noteworthy, because it refers to one of the most singular problems of our time. (Federico De Roberto)"

"The people who could best think about art seem to be artists. An exquisite artist, a delicate poet like Sully Prudhomme, who possesses, with his artistic faculties, a solid literary and, more importantly, scientific culture, has given us the book of Expression in the Fine Arts, which is among the most thoughtful and ponderous to appear in recent years. Although the title speaks only of expression, many other problems of aesthetics are included in this one that the author proposes to solve. The first of all is, without a doubt, the one concerning the nature of art, or rather the relationship between art and nature. (Federico De Roberto)"

"Sully Prudhomme is a writer of equal depth. You bathe in it without fear and always hit rock bottom. (Jules Renard)"

"Sully Prudhomme, Journal inintima, translated by Pietro Lazzaro, Pensieri (Pensées), translated by Pietro Lazzaro, Poesie (Poésies), translated by Maria Luisa Spaziani, in I Premi Nobel per la Letteratura, vol. II, Fratelli Fabbri Editori, Milan, 1965."

"He who knows die, has no longer a master."