Claude Monet Quotes

We know nothing accurately in reality, but [only] as it changes according to the bodily condition, and the constitution of those things that flow upon [the body] and impinge upon it.

I see the rainbow in the sky, the dew upon the grass; I see them, and I ask not why they glimmer or they pass. With folded arms I linger not to call them back; 'twere vain: In this, or in some other spot, I know they'll shine again.

The secret of the illusoriness is in the necessity of a succession of moods or objects. Gladly we would anchor, but the anchorageis quicksand.

it is better to be a part of beauty for one instant and then cease to exist than to exist forever and never be a part of beauty

Nothing is permanent but change.

You can never visit the same place twice. Each time, it's a different story. By the very act of coming back, you wipe out what came before.

Not one is constant, but everything is changing.

You can step in the same river but the water will always be new.

The most vital things in the look of a landscape endure only for a moment. Work should be done from memory; memory of that vital moment.

Natural beauty is essentially temporary and sad, hence the impression of obscene mockery which artificial flowers give us.

I try to catch at many a tuneLike petals of light fallen from the moon,Broken and bright on a dark lagoon,But they float away - for who can holdYouth, or perfume or the moon's gold?

To-day is always different from yesterday.

Impermanence is the very essence of joy-the drop of bitterness that enables one to perceive the sweet.

What do we call the river? Every moment the water is changing, the shore is changing, every moment the environment is changing, what is the river then? It is the name of this series of changes.

The mind has no existence by itself; it is only the glitter of the sun on the surface of the waters.

A work of art is static; and its value and its weakness lie in being so: but the tuft of grass and the clouds above it belong to our own travelling brotherhood.

All is flux; nothing stays still.

The shimmering night does not stay for mortals, not misfortunes, nor wealth, but in a moment it is gone, and to the turn of another comes joy and loss.

For poems are like rainbows; they escape you quickly.

It’s difficult to ever go back to the same places or people. You turn away, even for a moment, and when you turn back around, everything’s changed.

All entities move and nothing remains still.

And any small moments of intense, flaring beauty such as this morning's will be utterly forgotten, dissolved by time like a super-8 film left out in the rain, without sound, and quickly replaced by thousands of silently growing trees.

Better a life like a falling star, brief bright across the dark, than the long, long waiting of the immortals, loveless and cheerlessly wise.