Top 120 Claude Monet Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at.”

— Claude Monet

2. “My life has been nothing but a failure.”

— Claude Monet

3. “Everything changes, even stone.”

— Claude Monet

4. “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

5. “The richness I achieve comes from nature, the source of my inspiration.”

— Claude Monet

6. “Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.”

— Claude Monet

7. “My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.”

— Claude Monet

8. “The light constantly changes, and that alters the atmosphere and beauty of things every minute.”

— Claude Monet

9. “These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession.”

— Claude Monet

10. “I would like to paint the way a bird sings.”

— Claude Monet

11. “It’s on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.”

— Claude Monet

12. “My work is always better when I am alone and follow my own impressions.”

— Claude Monet

13. “A good impression is lost so quickly...”

— Claude Monet

14. “I’m continuing to work hard, not without periods of discouragement, but my strength comes back again.”

— Claude Monet

15. “Light is the most important person in the picture.”

— Claude Monet

16. “Never, even as a child, would I bend to a rule.”

— Claude Monet

17. “Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.”

— Claude Monet

18. “I want the unobtainable. Other artists paint a bridge, a house, a boat, and that’s the end. They are finished. I want to paint the air which surrounds the bridge, the house, the boat, the beauty of the air in which these objects are located, and that is nothing short of impossible.”

— Claude Monet

19. “I must have flowers, always, and always.”

— Claude Monet

20. “I want to paint the air in which the bridge, the house and the boat are to be found – the beauty of the air around them, and that is nothing less than the impossible.”

— Claude Monet

21. “Water Lilies’ is an extension of my life. Without the woter the lilies cannot live, as I am without art.”

— Claude Monet

22. “It took me time to understand my water lilies. I had planted them for the pleasure of it; I grew them without ever thinking of painting them.”

— Claude Monet

23. “The real subject of every painting is light.”

— Claude Monet

24. “All I did was to look at what the universe showed me, to let my brush bear witness to it.”

— Claude Monet

25. “I had so much fire in me and so many plans...”

— Claude Monet

26. “What keeps my heart awake is colorful silence.”

— Claude Monet

27. “Nature won’t be summoned to order and won’t be kept waiting. It must be caught, well caught.”

— Claude Monet

28. “The older I become the more I realize of that I have to work very hard to reproduce what I search: the instantaneous. The influence of the atmosphere on the things and the light scattered throughout.”

— Claude Monet

29. “Zaandam has enough to paint for a lifetime.”

— Claude Monet

30. “I am good at only two things, and those are gardening and painting.”

— Claude Monet

31. “I would advise young artists to paint as they can, as long as they can, without being afraid of painting badly.”

— Claude Monet

32. “I am very depressed and deeply disgusted with painting. It is really a continual torture.”

— Claude Monet

33. “I haven’t yet managed to capture the colour of this landscape; there are moments when I’m appalled at the colours I’m having to use, I’m afraid what I’m doing is just dreadful and yet I really am understating it; the light is simply terrifying.”

— Claude Monet

34. “I’m in fine fettle and fired with a desire to paint.”

— Claude Monet

35. “I didn’t become an impressionist. As long as I can remember I always have been one.”

— Claude Monet

36. “Nothing in the whole world is of interest to me but my painting and my flowers.”

— Claude Monet

37. “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

38. “I never draw except with brush and paint...”

— Claude Monet

39. “I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.”

— Claude Monet

40. “I waited for the idea to consolidate, for the grouping and composition of themes to settle themselves in my brain.”

— Claude Monet

41. “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

42. “Now I really feel the landscape, I can be bold and include every tone of blue and pink: it’s enchanting, it’s delicious.”

— Claude Monet

43. “Apart from painting and gardening, I’m not good at anything.”

— Claude Monet

44. “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

45. “I haven’t many years left ahead of me and I must devote all my time to painting, in the hope of achieving something worthwhile in the end, something if possible that will satisfy me.”

— Claude Monet

46. “I’m enjoying the most perfect tranquillity, free from all worries, and in consequence would like to stay this way forever, in a peaceful corner of the countryside like this.”

— Claude Monet

47. “I intend to do a large painting of the cliff at Etretat, although it is terribly bold of me to do so after Courbet has painted it so admirably, but I will try to do it in a different way...”

— Claude Monet

48. “No, I’m not a great painter. Neither am I a great poet.”

— Claude Monet

49. “One day Boudin said to me, ‘Learn to draw well and appreciate the sea, the light, the blue sky.’ I took his advice.”

— Claude Monet

50. “Colors pursue me like a constant worry. They even worry me in my sleep.”

— Claude Monet