1. “Techniques vary, art stays the same; it is a transposition of nature at once forceful and sensitive.” – Claude Monet
2. “It seems to me that when I see nature I see it ready-made, completely written – but then, try to do it!” – Claude Monet
3. “The only merit I have is to have painted directly from nature with the aim of conveying my impressions in front of the most fugitive effects.” – Claude Monet
4. “I’ve been working so hard that I’m exhausted… I feel I won’t be able to do without a few weeks’ rest, so I’m going off to see the sea.” – Claude Monet
5. “I am installed in a fairylike place. I do not know where to poke my head; everything is superb, and I would like to do everything, so I use up and squander lots of color, for there are trials to be made.” – Claude Monet
6. “I’m very happy, very delighted. I’m setting to like a fighting cockerel, for I’m surrounded here by all that I love.” – Claude Monet
7. “I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers” – Claude Monet
8. “I’m very happy, very delighted. I’m setting to like a fighting cockerel, for I’m surrounded here by all that I love.” – Claude Monet
9. “What keeps my heart awake is colorful silence.” – Claude Monet
10. “Colors pursue me like a constant worry. They even worry me in my sleep.” – Claude Monet
11. “The richness I achieve comes from nature, the source of my inspiration. ” – Claude Monet
12. “I’m never finished with my paintings; the further I get, the more I seek the impossible and the more powerless I feel.” – Claude Monet
13. “I can no longer work outside because of the intensity of the light.” – Claude Monet
14. “I had so much fire in me and so many plans.” – Claude Monet
15. “As for myself, I met with as much success as I ever could have wanted. In other words, I was enthusiastically run-down by every critic of the period.” – Claude Monet
16. “I get madder and madder on giving back what I feel.” – Claude Monet
17. “All of a sudden I had the revelation of how enchanting my pond was.” – Claude Monet
18. “…Every day I discover even more beautiful things. It is intoxicating me, and I want to paint it all – my head is bursting…” – Claude Monet
19. “Light is the most important person in the picture.” – Claude Monet
20. “I know well enough in advance that you’ll find my paintings perfect. I know that if they are exhibited they’ll be a great success, but I couldn’t be more indifferent to it since I know they are bad, I’m certain of it.” – Claude Monet
21. “I’ve only myself to blame for it, my impotence most of all and my weakness. If I do any good work now it will be only by chance.” – Claude Monet
22. “I’ve only myself to blame for it, my impotence most of all and my weakness. If I do any good work now it will be only by chance.” – Claude Monet
23. “I’m not performing miracles, I’m using up and wasting a lot of paint…” – Claude Monet
24. “Nature won’t be summoned to order and won’t be kept waiting. It must be caught, well caught.” – Claude Monet
25. “I work at my garden all the time and with love. What I need most are flowers, always. My heart is forever in Giverny.” – Claude Monet
26. “Never, even as a child, would I bend to a rule.” – Claude Monet
27. “No one but myself knows the anxiety I go through and the trouble I give myself…” – Claude Monet
28. “I don’t think I’m made for any earthly kind of pleasure.” – Claude Monet
29. “If only the weather would improve, there’d be hope of some work, but every day brings rain.” – Claude Monet
30. “I’m in fine fettle and fired with a desire to paint.” – Claude Monet
31. “One day I am satisfied, the next day I find it all bad; still I hope that some day I will find some of them good.” – Claude Monet
32. “To have gone to all this trouble to get to this is just too stupid! Outside there’s brilliant sunshine but I don’t feel up to looking at it.” – Claude Monet
33. “My work is always better when I am alone and follow my own impressions.” – Claude Monet
34. “For almost two months now I’ve been struggling away with no result.” – Claude Monet
35. “My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.” – Claude Monet
36. “For me, the subject is of secondary importance: I want to convey what is alive between me and the subject.” – Claude Monet
37. “No, I’m not a great painter. Neither am I a great poet.” – Claude Monet
38. “The point is to know how to use the colours, the choice of which is, when all’s said and done, a matter of habit.” – Claude Monet
39. “Thanks to my work everything’s going well; it’s a great consolation.” – Claude Monet
40. “When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you, a tree, a house, a field or whatever. Merely think here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape.” – Claude Monet
41. “The light constantly changes, and that alters the atmosphere and beauty of things every minute.” – Claude Monet
42. “All I did was to look at what the universe showed me, to let my brush bear witness to it.” – Claude Monet
43. “Getting up at 4 in the morning, I slave away all day until by the evening I’m exhausted, and I end by forgetting all my responsibilities, thinking only of the work I’ve set out to do.” – Claude Monet
44. “I think we can change everything all the time. Accidents are the best things in existence. They force you to leave a route that seemed to be mapped out… It’s often when things aren’t going well that we are forced into doing them differently and they suddenly become interesting” – Claude Monet
45. “I’ve always refused requests even from friends to employ a technique I know nothing about.” – Claude Monet
46. “I never draw except with brush and paint…” – Claude Monet
47. “It’s enough to drive you crazy, trying to depict the weather, the atmosphere, the ambience.” – Claude Monet
48. “It’s on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.” – Claude Monet
49. “I can only draw what I see.” – Claude Monet
50. “The more I live, the more I regret how little I know.” – Claude Monet
51. “I would like to paint the way a bird sings.” – Claude Monet
52. “What could be said about me…a man to whom only his painting matters? And of course his garden and his flowers as well.” – Claude Monet
53. “I’ve said it before and can only repeat that I owe everything to Boudin and I attribute my success to him. I came to be fascinated by his studies, the products of what I call instantaneity.” – Claude Monet
54. “It is difficult to stop in time because one gets carried away. But I have that strength; it is the only strength I have.” – Claude Monet
55. “People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it’s simply necessary to love.” – Claude Monet
56. “I will bring lots of studies back with me so I can work on some big things at home.” – Claude Monet
57. “It’s the hardest thing to be alone in being satisfied with what one’s done.” – Claude Monet
58. “I must have flowers, always and always.” – Claude Monet
59. “I’m in a foul mood as I’m making stupid mistakes… This morning I lost beyond repair a painting with which I had been happy, having done about twenty sessions on it; it had to be thoroughly scraped away… what a rage I was in!” – Claude Monet
60. “I think only of my painting, and if I were to drop it, I think I’d go crazy.” – Claude Monet
61. “A good impression is lost so quickly.” – Claude Monet
62. “I am very depressed and deeply disgusted with painting. It is really a continual torture.” – Claude Monet
63. “If the world really looks like that I will paint no more!” – Claude Monet
64. “Listening only to my instincts, I discovered superb things.” – Claude Monet
65. “No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition.” – Claude Monet
66. “I didn’t become an impressionist. As long as I can remember I always have been one.” – Claude Monet
67. “It is better to have done something than to have been someone.” – Claude Monet
68. “Lots of people will protest that it’s quite unreal and that I’m out of my mind, but that’s just too bad.” – Claude Monet
69. “Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.” – Claude Monet
70. “When it is dark, it seems to me as if I were dying, and I can’t think any more.” – Claude Monet
71. “Now, more than ever, I realize just how illusory my undeserved success has been. I still hold out some hope of doing better, but age and unhappiness have sapped my strength.” – Claude Monet
72. “I sometimes feel ashamed that I am devoting myself to artistic pursuits while so many of our people are suffering and dying for us. It’s true that fretting never did any good.” – Claude Monet
73. “These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession.” – Claude Monet
74. “I’m working hard with more determination than ever. My success at the Salon led to my selling several paintings and since your absence I have made 800 francs; I hope, when I have contracts with more dealers, it will be better still.” – Claude Monet
75. “My only desire is an intimate infusion with nature, and the only fate I wish is to have worked and lived in harmony with her laws.” – Claude Monet
76. “I’m not performing miracles, I’m using up and wasting a lot of paint…” – Claude Monet
77. “I let a good many mistakes show through when fixing my sensations. It will always be the same and this is what makes me despair.” – Claude Monet
78. “Work is nearly always a torture. If I could find something else I would be much happier, because I could use this other interest as a form of relaxation. Now I cannot relax.” – Claude Monet
79. “I’m continuing to work hard, not without periods of discouragement, but my strength comes back again.” – Claude Monet
80. “My eyes were finally opened and I understood nature. I learned at the same time to love it.” – Claude Monet
81. “Take clear water with grass waving at the bottom. It’s wonderful to look at, but to try to paint it is enough to make one insane.” – Claude Monet
82. “The Seine. I have painted it all my life, at all hours of the day, at all times of the year, from Paris to the sea…Argenteuil, Poissy, Vétheuil, Giverny, Rouen, Le Havre.” – Claude Monet
83. “One’s better off alone, and yet there are so many things that are impossible to fathom on one’s own. In fact it’s a terrible business and the task is a hard one.” – Claude Monet
84. “Every day I discover more and more beautiful things. It’s enough to drive one mad. I have such a desire to do everything, my head is bursting with it.” – Claude Monet
85. “Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.” – Claude Monet
86. “I would advise young artists to paint as they can, as long as they can, without being afraid of painting badly.” – Claude Monet
87. “Etretat is becoming more and more amazing. Now is the real moment: the beach with all its fine boats; it is superb, and I am enraged not to be more skillful in rendering all this. I would need two hands and hundreds of canvases.” – Claude Monet
88. “One can do something if one can see and understand it…” – Claude Monet
89. “I do what I can to convey what I experience before nature and most often, in order to succeed in conveying what I feel, I totally forget the most elementary rules of painting, if they exist that is.” – Claude Monet
90. “Most people think I paint fast. I paint very slowly.” – Claude Monet
91. “My life has been nothing but a failure.” – Claude Monet
92. “I’ve said it before and can only repeat that I owe everything to Boudin and I attribute my success to him. I came to be fascinated by his studies, the products of what I call instantaneity.” – Claude Monet
93. “It would be asking too much to want to sell only to connoisseurs – that way starvation lies.” – Claude Monet
94. “Nothing in the whole world is of interest to me but my painting and my flowers.” – Claude Monet
95. “To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at.” – Claude Monet