Auguste Rodin Quotes

I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.

Art trains the mind through the eye, and the eye through the mind. As the sun colors flowers, so does art color life.

The beauty that is there is also available for me, too. But I see a deeper beauty that isn't so readily available to others.... I don't see how studying a flower ever detracts from its beauty. It only adds

Art is nature speeded up and God slowed down.

Dear God! how beauty varies in nature and art. In a woman the flesh must be like marble; in a statue the marble must be like flesh.

Find beauty not only in the thing itself but in the pattern of the shadows, the light and dark which that thing provides.

Reality only reveals itself when it is illuminated by a ray of poetry.

I look at the feminine body as a piece of art.

Refinement creates beauty everywhere. It is the grossness of the spectator that discovers anything like grossness in the object.

If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being.

He who cannot see the beautiful side is a bad painter, a bad friend, a bad lover; he cannot lift his mind and his heart so high as goodness.

Why do some people always see beautiful skies and grass and lovely flowers and incredible human beings, while others are hard-pressed to find anything or any place that is beautiful?

I must be mad, or very tired, When the curve of a blue bay beyond a railroad track Is shrill and sweet to me like the sudden springing of a tune, And the sight of a white church above thin trees in a city square Amazes my eyes as though it were the Parthenon.

I had wondered for a long time why God had preferences and why all souls did not receive an equal amount of grace [...] Jesus saw fit to enlighten me about this mystery. He set the book of nature before me and I saw that all the flowers He has created are lovely. The splendor of the rose and whiteness of the lily do not rob the little violet of its scent nor the daisy of its simple charm. I realized that if every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness and there would be no wild flowers to make the meadows gay.

For he who would proceed aright... should begin in youth to visit beautiful forms... out of that he should create fair thoughts; and soon he will of himself perceive that the beauty of one form is akin to the beauty of another, and that beauty in every form is one and the same.

There is always the possibility of beauty where there is an unsealed human eye; of music where there is an unstopped human ear; and of inspiration where there is a receptive human spirit.

Offensive objects, at a proper distance, acquire even a degree of beauty.

It requires a certain kind of mind to see beauty in a hamburger bun.

One does not see anything until one sees its beauty.

Truth exists for the wise, beauty for the feeling heart.

Flowers and plants are silent presences. They nourish every sense except the ear.

Against a dark sky, all flowers look like fireworks.

Once in a golden hour, I cast to earth a seed, And up there grew a flower, That others called a weed.

Because words were hills and valleys you traveled, so lovely sometimes that they hurt your eyes.

The thistle is a prince. Let any man that has an eye for beauty take a view of the whole plant, and where will he see a more expressive grace and symmetry; and where is there a more kingly flower?