180 Quotes by Paul Gauguin

Do not copy nature. Art is an abstraction. Rather, bring your art forth by dreaming in front of her and think more of creation.

Civilization is what makes you sick.

Under the continual contact with the pebbles my feet have become hardened and used to the ground. My body, almost constantly nude, no longer suffers from the sun. Civilization is falling from me little by little. I am beginning to think simply, to feel only very little hatred for my neighbor - rather, to love him.

When the physical organism breaks up, the soul survives. It then takes on another body.

I am a great artist and I know it. It's because I am that I have endured such sufferings.

In art one is concerned with the condition of the spirit for three quarters of the time; one must therefore care for oneself if he wishes to make something great and lasting.

But I owe something to Vincent, and that is, in the consciousness of having been useful to him, the confirmation of my own original ideas about painting. And also, at difficult moments, the remembrance that one finds others unhappier than oneself.

A great sentiment can be rendered immediately. Dream on it and look for the simplest form in which you can express it.

I have always wanted a mistress who was fat, and I have never found one. To make a fool of me, they are always pregnant.