La Goulue (1898) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Poster for the Moulin Rouge

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

“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.”

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

“The sky is pretty like an angel.”

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

“Genius is childhood rediscovered at will.”

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

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

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

“But where are the snows of yesteryear?”

“To create is always to speak of childhood.”

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

“One must be absolutely modern.”

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

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

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

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

“Art is the premonition of truth.”