Goodreads helps you follow your favorite authors. Be the first to learn about new releases!
Start by following Henri Matisse.
Follow Author
(?)
Showing 1-30 of 42
“Creativity takes courage. ”
― Henri Matisse
tags: art, creativity
2098 likes
Like
“There are always flowers for those who want to see them.”
― Henri Matisse
184 likes
Like
“I didn't expect to recover from my second operation but since I did, I consider that I'm living on borrowed time. Every day that dawns is a gift to me and I take it in that way. I accept it gratefully without looking beyond it. I completely forget my physical suffering and all the unpleasantness of my present condition and I think only of the joy of seeing the sun rise once more and of being able to work a little bit, even under difficult conditions.”
― Henri Matisse
tags: gift, gratefulness, healing, illness, joy, operation, suffering, surgery
97 likes
Like
“You must forget all your theories, all your ideas before the subject. What part of these is really your own will be expressed in your expression of the emotion awakened in you by the subject.”
― Henri Matisse
tags: art, art-theory, creativity, design, emotion, matisse, painting, sculpture, self-expression, subject
78 likes
Like
“We ought to view ourselves with the same curiosity and openness with which we study a tree, the sky or a thought, because we too are linked to the entire universe.”
― Henri Matisse
tags: self
72 likes
Like
“To look at something as though we had never seen it before requires great courage.”
― Henri Matisse
tags: courage, original-thoughts
54 likes
Like
“Another word for creativity is courage.”
― Henri Matisse
Like
“Don’t wait for inspiration. It comes while one is working.”
― Henri Matisse
42 likes
Like
“...for whether we want to or not, we belong to our time and we share in its opinions, its feelings, even its delusions.”
― Henri Matisse
37 likes
Like
“Nothing can be accomplished without love. ”
― Henri Matisse
34 likes
Like
“You study, you learn, but you guard the original naïveté. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover.”
― Henri Matisse
29 likes
Like
“Exactitude is not truth.”
― Henri Matisse
27 likes
Like
“I don't know whether I believe in God or not. I think, really, I'm some kind of a Buddhist. But the essential thing is to put oneself in a frame of mind which is close to that of prayer.”
― Henri Matisse
tags: buddhist, god, prayer
27 likes
Like
“From the moment I held the box of colors in my hands, I knew this was my life. I threw myself into it like a beast that plunges towards the thing it loves.”
― Henri Matisse
tags: art, artist, fauvism, inspirational, life
26 likes
Like
“To arrive is to be in prison.”
― Henri Matisse
25 likes
Like
“I am unable to distinguish between the feeling I have for life and my way of expressing it.”
― Henri Matisse
21 likes
Like
“An artist must never be a prisoner. Prisoner? An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success, etc”
― Henri Matisse
18 likes
Like
“I am unable to make any distinction between the feeling I get from life and the way I translate that feeling into painting.”
― Henri Matisse
17 likes
Like
“Derive happiness in oneself from a good day’s work, from illumination the fog that surround”
― Henri Matisse
16 likes
Like
“Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul”
― Henri Matisse
15 likes
Like
“Whoever wishes to devote himself to painting should begin by cutting out his own tongue”
― Henri Matisse
15 likes
Like
“Don't wait for inspiration. It comes while working.”
― Henri Matisse
tags: art, creativity, inspiration, matisse
12 likes
Like
“The importance of an artist is to be measured by the quantity of new signs which he has introduced to the language of art.”
― Henri Matisse
tags: artist, language-of-art, signs
11 likes
Like
“It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.”
― Henri Matisse
tags: art
10 likes
Like
“Si je crois en Dieu? Oui, quand je travaille. Quand je suis soumis et modeste, je me sens tellement aidé par quelqu'un qui me fait faire des choses qui me surpassent.”
― Henri Matisse
8 likes
Like
“When you're out of willpower, you can call on stubbornness.”
― Henri Matisse
8 likes
Like
“Time extracts various values from a painter's work. When these values are exhausted the pictures are forgotten, and the more a picture has to give, the greater it is.”
― Henri Matisse
6 likes
Like
“The essential thing is to spring forth, to express the bolt of lightning one senses upon contact with a thing. The function of the artist is not to translate an observation but to express the shock of the object on his nature; the shock, with the original reaction.”
― Henri Matisse
6 likes
Like
“I do not distinguish between the construction of a book and that of a
painting and I always proceed from the simple to the complex." - 1946”
― Henri Matisse
tags: paintings, writing-process
4 likes
Like
“Instinct must be thwarted just as one prunes the branches of a tree so that it will grow better.”
― Henri Matisse
3 likes
Like
« previous 1 2 next »
All Quotes | Add A Quote
Books by Henri Matisse
Jazz
173 ratings
Matisse Picasso
45 ratings
Matisse in the Studio
29 ratings
The Cut-Outs of Henri Matisse
26 ratings
More…
