Carmen (ca. 1884) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Poster

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

“Only children know what they are looking for.”

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

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

“But where are the snows of yesteryear?”

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

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

“Genius is childhood rediscovered at will.”

“Art is the premonition of truth.”

“Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams.”

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

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

“To create is always to speak of childhood.”

“One must be absolutely modern.”

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

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

“The sky is pretty like an angel.”

“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.”