Quotes by Edgar Degas

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.

It is all very well to copy what you see, but it is better to draw what you see in your mind. Then your memory and imagination are freed from the tyranny imposed by nature.

In painting you must give the idea of the true by means of the false.

Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.

Everyone has talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it at fifty.

I always suspect an artist who is successful before he is dead.

What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming.

One must do the same subject over again ten times, a hundred times. In art nothing must resemble an accident, not even movement.

No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters.

It is all very well to copy what one sees, but it is far better to draw what one now only sees in one's memory. That is a transformation in which imagination collaborates with memory.