Top 120 Claude Monet Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “I know well enough in advance that you’ll find my paintings perfect. I know that if they are exhibited they’ll be a great success, but I couldn’t be more indifferent to it since I know they are bad, I’m certain of it.”

— Claude Monet

102. “The essence of the motif is the mirror of water, whose appearance alters at every moment.”

— Claude Monet

103. “The creditors are proving impossible to deal with and short of a sudden appearance on the scene of wealthy art patrons, we are going to be turned out of this dear little house where I led a simple life and was able to work so well. I do not know what will become of us...”

— Claude Monet

104. “Most people think I paint fast. I paint very slowly.”

— Claude Monet

105. “I’m not lacking for enthusiasm as you can see, given that I have something like 65 canvases covered with paint and I’ll be needing more since the place is quite out of the ordinary; so I’m going to order some more canvases...”

— Claude Monet

106. “I’m quite content: although what I’m doing is far from being as I should like, I am complemented often enough all the same...”

— Claude Monet

107. “It is difficult to stop in time because one gets carried away. But I have that strength; it is the only strength I have.”

— Claude Monet

108. “I don’t think I’m made for any earthly kind of pleasure.”

— Claude Monet

109. “My heart is forever in Giverny.”

— Claude Monet

110. “I’ve always refused requests even from friends to employ a technique I know nothing about.”

— Claude Monet

111. “I will bring lots of studies back with me so I can work on some big things at home.”

— Claude Monet

112. “I’ve spent so long on some paintings that I no longer know what to think of them, and I am definitely getting harder to please; nothing satisfies me...”

— Claude Monet

113. “What can be said about a man who is interested in nothing but his painting? It’s a pity if a man can only interest himself in one thing. But I can’t do any thing else. I have only one interest.”

— Claude Monet

114. “When I work I forget all the rest.”

— Claude Monet

115. “Lots of people will protest that it’s quite unreal and that I’m out of my mind, but that’s just too bad.”

— Claude Monet

116. “One can do something if one can see and understand it...”

— Claude Monet

117. “I can no longer work outside because of the intensity of the light.”

— Claude Monet

118. “As for myself, I met with as much success as I ever could have wanted. In other words, I was enthusiastically run-down by every critic of the period.”

— Claude Monet

119. “I’m going to get down to a still life on a size 50 canvas of rayfish and dogfish with old fishermen’s baskets. Then I’m going to turn out a few pictures to send wherever possible, given that now, first and foremost – unfortunately – I have to earn some money.”

— Claude Monet

120. “I am enslaved to my work, always wanting the impossible, and never, I believe, have I been less favoured by the endlessly changeable weather.”

— Claude Monet

121. “I have once more taken up things that can’t be done: water with grasses weaving on the bottom. But I’m always tackling that sort of thing!”

— Claude Monet

122. “I’m working hard with more determination than ever. My success at the Salon led to my selling several paintings and since your absence I have made 800 francs; I hope, when I have contracts with more dealers, it will be better still.”

— Claude Monet

123. “To have gone to all this trouble to get to this is just too stupid! Outside there’s brilliant sunshine but I don’t feel up to looking at it...”

— Claude Monet

124. “Think of me getting up before 6, I’m at work by 7 and I continue until 6.30 in the evening, standing up all the time, nine canvases. It’s murderous...”

— Claude Monet

125. “By the single example of this painter devoted to his art with such independence, my destiny as a painter opened out to me.”

— Claude Monet

126. “It would be asking too much to want to sell only to connoisseurs – that way starvation lies.”

— Claude Monet

127. “For almost two months now I’ve been struggling away with no result.”

— Claude Monet

128. “Despite my extremely modest prices, dealers and art lovers are turning their backs on me. It is very depressing to see the lack of interest shown in an art object which has no market value.”

— Claude Monet

129. “I’ve said it before and can only repeat that I owe everything to Boudin and I attribute my success to him. I came to be fascinated by his studies, the products of what I call instantaneity.”

— Claude Monet

130. “I still have a lot of pleasure doing them, but as time goes by I come to appreciate more clearly which paintings are good and which should be discarded.”

— Claude Monet

131. “I have made tremendous efforts to work in a darker register and express the sinister and tragic quality of the place, given my natural tendency to work in light and pale tones.”

— Claude Monet

132. “You might perhaps like to see the few canvases I was able to save from the bailiffs and the rest, since I thought you might be so good as to help me a little, as I am in quite a desperate state, and the worst is that I can no longer even work.”

— Claude Monet

133. “Thanks to my work everything’s going well; it’s a great consolation.”

— Claude Monet

134. “I still don’t know where I am going to sleep tomorrow.”

— Claude Monet

135. “I think only of my painting, and if I were to drop it, I think I’d go crazy.”

— Claude Monet

136. “I’ve only myself to blame for it, my impotence most of all and my weakness. If I do any good work now it will be only by chance.”

— Claude Monet

137. “I’ve done what I could as a painter and that seems to me to be sufficient. I don’t want to be compared to the great masters of the past, and my painting is open to criticism; that’s enough.”

— Claude Monet

138. “I am installed in a fairylike place. I do not know where to poke my head; everything is superb, and I would like to do everything, so I use up and squander lots of color, for there are trials to be made.”

— Claude Monet