Poster of The Chatelaine or the Tocsin (1895) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

“To create is always to speak of childhood.”

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

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

“Genius is childhood rediscovered at will.”

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

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

“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 premonition of truth.”

“The sky is pretty like an angel.”

“One must be absolutely modern.”

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

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

“Only children know what they are looking for.”

“But where are the snows of yesteryear?”

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

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

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

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