Top 60 Auguste Rodin Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.”

— Auguste Rodin

Featured in: Time Quotes, Deep Quotes About Life, Short Quotes About Life, Artist Quotes

2. “Patience is also a form of action.”

— Auguste Rodin

Featured in: Patience Quotes

3. “Love your calling with passion, it is the meaning of your life.”

— Auguste Rodin

4. “The more simple we are, the more complete we become.”

— Auguste Rodin

5. “I invent nothing, I rediscover.”

— Auguste Rodin

6. “Where shall we begin? There is no beginning. Start where you arrive. Stop before what entices you. And work! You will enter little by little into the entirety. Method will be born in proportion to your interest.”

— Auguste Rodin

7. “The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live. Be a man before being an artist!”

— Auguste Rodin

8. “You must always work.”

— Auguste Rodin

9. “Black is the queen of colours.”

— Auguste Rodin

10. “What is commonly called ugliness in nature can in art become full of beauty.”

— Auguste Rodin

11. “The nude alone is well dressed.”

— Auguste Rodin

12. “There is nothing ugly in art except that which is without character, that is to say, that which offers no outer or inner truth.”

— Auguste Rodin

13. “People say I think too much about women, yet, after all what is there more important to think about?”

— Auguste Rodin

14. “To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature.”

— Auguste Rodin

15. “The artist has only to trust his eyes.”

— Auguste Rodin

16. “It is the artist who is truthful and it is photography which lies, for in reality time does not stop.”

— Auguste Rodin

17. “The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation.”

— Auguste Rodin

18. “The body always expresses the spirit whose envelope it is. And for him who can see, the nude offers the richest meaning.”

— Auguste Rodin

19. “To any artist, worthy of the name, all in nature is beautiful, because his eyes, fearlessly accepting all exterior truth, read there, as in an open book, all the inner truth.”

— Auguste Rodin

20. “There are unknown forces in nature; when we give ourselves wholly to her, without reserve, she lends them to us; she shows us these forms, which our watching eyes do not see, which our intelligence does not understand or suspect.”

— Auguste Rodin

21. “He who is discouraged after a failure is not a real artist.”

— Auguste Rodin

22. “In art, immorality cannot exist. Art is always sacred.”

— Auguste Rodin

23. “Art is the pleasure of a spirit that enters nature and discovers that it too has a soul.”

— Auguste Rodin

24. “I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don’t need.”

— Auguste Rodin

25. “The artist is the confidant of nature, flowers carry on dialogues with him through the graceful bending of their stems and the harmoniously tinted nuances of their blossoms, Every flower has a cordial word which nature directs towards him.”

— Auguste Rodin

26. “Where did I learn to understand sculpture? In the woods by looking at the trees, along roads by observing the formation of clouds, in the studio by studying the model, everywhere except in the schools.”

— Auguste Rodin

27. “The only principle in art is to copy what you see. Dealers in aesthetics to the contrary, every other method is fatal.”

— Auguste Rodin

28. “Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which nature herself is animated.”

— Auguste Rodin

29. “If we now seek the spiritual significance of the technique of Michelangelo we shall find that his sculpture expressed restless energy...”

— Auguste Rodin

30. “Sculpture is the art of the hole and the lump.”

— Auguste Rodin

31. “Man’s naked form belongs to no particular moment in history; it is eternal, and can be looked upon with joy by the people of all ages.”

— Auguste Rodin

32. “The realities of nature surpass our most ambitious dreams.”

— Auguste Rodin

33. “Even with all the documents, you can never forge nature.”

— Auguste Rodin

34. “If the artist only reproduces superficial features as photography does, if he copies the lineaments of a face exactly, without reference to character, he deserves no admiration. The resemblance which he ought to obtain is that of the soul.”

— Auguste Rodin

35. “Genius only comes to those who know how to use their eyes and their intelligence.”

— Auguste Rodin

36. “An artist worthy of the name should express all the truth of nature, not only the exterior truth, but also, and above all, the inner truth.”

— Auguste Rodin

37. “I know very well that one must fight, for one is often in contradiction to the spirit of the age.”

— Auguste Rodin

38. “There is grace in elegance, but beyond grace there is perfection.”

— Auguste Rodin

39. “If the artist succeeds in producing the impression of a movement which takes several moments for accomplishment, his work is certainly much less conventional than the scientific image, where time is abruptly suspended.”

— Auguste Rodin

40. “Mystery is like a kind of atmosphere which bathes the greatest works of the masters.”

— Auguste Rodin

41. “True artists are almost the only men who do their work for pleasure.”

— Auguste Rodin

42. “Recently I have taken to isolating limbs, the torso. Why am I blamed for it? Why is the head allowed and not portions of the body? Every part of the human figure is expressive.”

— Auguste Rodin

43. “I would have to talk for a year to repeat a single on of my works with words.”

— Auguste Rodin

44. “The modes of expression of men of genius differ as much as their souls, and it is impossible to say that in some among them, drawing and color are better or worse than in others.”

— Auguste Rodin

45. “It is the artist who is truthful, while the photographer is mendacious; for, in reality, time never stops cold.”

— Auguste Rodin

46. “For him life is an endless joy, a perpetual delight, a mad intoxication. Not all seems good to him, for suffering, which must often come to those he loves and to himself, cruelly contradicts his optimism. But all is beautiful to him because he walks forever in the light of spiritual truth.”

— Auguste Rodin

47. “He salutes ingratitude as an experience which shall enrich his soul. His ecstasy is terrifying at times, but it is still happiness, because it is the continual adoration of truth.”

— Auguste Rodin

48. “At times his own heart is on the rack, yet stronger than his pain is the bitter joy which he experiences in understanding and giving expression to that pain.”

— Auguste Rodin

49. “When he sees beings everywhere destroying each other; when he sees all youth fading, all strength failing, all genius dying, when he is face to face with the will which decreed these tragic laws, more than ever he rejoices in his knowledge, and, seized anew by the passion for truth, he is happy.”

— Auguste Rodin

50. “The human body is first and foremost a mirror to the soul and its greatest beauty comes from that.”

— Auguste Rodin