Le bonheur de vivre (The Joy of Life) (1905) by Henri Matisse - Poster

“Sight does not master the pictures, it is the pictures which master one's sight. They flood one's consciousness.”

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”

“Perfumes, colors, and sounds respond to one another.”

“The sky is pretty like an angel.”

“But where are the snows of yesteryear?”

“Art is the reflection that the dazzled human soul gives back of the splendor of the beautiful.”

“Art hovers around the truth, but with the firm intention not to burn itself.”

“Art is the premonition of truth.”

“If the world were clear, art would not be.”

“Only children know what they are looking for.”

“Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees.”

“Beauty is always strange. I do not mean that it is deliberately, coldly strange, for in that case it would be a monster off the rails of life. I say that it always contains a little strangeness, a naive strangeness.”

“One must be absolutely modern.”

“Tears fall in my heart as rain falls on the town.”

“Art is born of constraints, lives of struggles, and dies of freedom.”

“One sees clearly only with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes.”

“Genius is childhood rediscovered at will.”

“To create is always to speak of childhood.”