Top 160 Henri Matisse Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “There are always flowers for those who want to see them.”

— Henri Matisse

Featured in: Positive Quotes, Happiness Quotes, Attitude Quotes, Uplifting Quotes

2. “Creativity takes courage. ”

— Henri Matisse

Featured in: Creativity Quotes

3. “Don’t wait for inspiration. It comes while one is working.”

— Henri Matisse

4. “An artist is an explorer.”

— Henri Matisse

5. “Creative people are curious, flexible, and independent with a tremendous spirit and a love of play.”

— Henri Matisse

6. “Work cures everything.”

— Henri Matisse

7. “If I close my eyes, I see things better than with my eyes open.”

— Henri Matisse

8. “When you’re out of willpower you call on stubbornness, that’s the trick.”

— Henri Matisse

9. “Don’t try to be original. Be simple. Be good technically, and if there is something in you, it will come out.”

— Henri Matisse

10. “Creation begins with vision.”

— Henri Matisse

11. “The essential thing is to work in a state of mind that approaches prayer.”

— Henri Matisse

12. “Color was not given to us in order that we imitate Nature. It was given to us so that we can express our emotions.”

— Henri Matisse

13. “Nothing can be accomplished without love.”

— Henri Matisse

14. “Precision is not reality.”

— Henri Matisse

15. “Much of the beauty that arises in art comes from the struggle an artist wages with his limited medium.”

— Henri Matisse

16. “What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter – a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.”

— Henri Matisse

17. “The artists must see all things as if he were seeing them for the first time. All his life he must see as he did when he was a child.”

— Henri Matisse

18. “Derive happiness in oneself from a good day’s work, from illuminating the fog that surrounds us.”

— Henri Matisse

19. “We ought to view ourselves with the same curiosity and openness with which we study a tree, the sky or a thought, because we too are linked to the entire universe.”

— Henri Matisse

20. “You want to paint? First of all you must cut off your tongue because your decision takes away from you the right to express yourself with anything but your brush.”

— Henri Matisse

21. “What I dream of is an art of balance.”

— Henri Matisse

22. “In love, the one who runs away is the winner.”

— Henri Matisse

23. “To look at something as though we had never seen it before requires great courage.”

— Henri Matisse

24. “Exactitude is not truth.”

— Henri Matisse

25. “All that is not useful in a picture is detrimental. A work of art must be harmonious in its entirety; for superfluous details would, in the mind of the beholder, encroach upon the essential elements.”

— Henri Matisse

26. “When I paint green, it doesn’t mean grass; when I paint blue, it doesn’t mean sky.”

— Henri Matisse

27. “I dream of an art of balance, of quietness, something analogous to a good armchair.”

— Henri Matisse

28. “I’ve been forty years discovering that the queen of all colors is black.”

— Henri Matisse

29. “The artist has to look at life as he did when he was a child. If he loses that faculty, he cannot express himself in an original, that is, a personal way.”

— Henri Matisse

30. “I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have a light joyousness of springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me.”

— Henri Matisse

31. “Fit the parts together, one into the other, and build your figure like a carpenter builds a house. Everything must be constructed, composed of parts that make a whole...”

— Henri Matisse

32. “It is with color that you render light, though you must also feel this light, have it within yourself.”

— Henri Matisse

33. “An artist must never be a prisoner. Prisoner? An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success, etc.”

— Henri Matisse

34. “Above all, an artist must never be too easily satisfied with what he has done...”

— Henri Matisse

35. “Hatred is a parasite that devours all. One doesn’t build upon hatred, but upon love.”

— Henri Matisse

36. “All my efforts go into creating an art that can be understood by everyone.”

— Henri Matisse

37. “A certain blue enters your soul.”

— Henri Matisse

38. “Color helps to express light, not the physical phenomenon, but the only light that really exists, that in the artist’s brain.”

— Henri Matisse

39. “There’s nothing clinically wrong with me, only an emotional imbalance – I pass too quickly from the wildest enthusiasm to the blackest despair.”

— Henri Matisse

40. “You study, you learn, but you guard the original naivete. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover.”

— Henri Matisse

41. “Ever since there have been men, man has given himself over to too little joy. That alone, my brothers, is our original sin. I should believe only in a God who understood how to dance.”

— Henri Matisse

42. “My choice of colors does not rest on any scientific theory, it is based on observation, on feeling, on the experience of my sensibility.”

— Henri Matisse

43. “From the moment I held the box of colors in my hands, I knew this was my life. I threw myself into it like a beast that plunges towards the thing it loves.”

— Henri Matisse

44. “Do remember that one line does nothing; it is only in relation to another that it creates a volume.”

— Henri Matisse

45. “For my part I have never avoided the influence of others. I would have considered it cowardice and a lack of sincerity toward myself.”

— Henri Matisse

46. “He who loves, flies, runs, and rejoices; he is free and nothing holds him back.”

— Henri Matisse

47. “Art is an escape from reality.”

— Henri Matisse

48. “I cannot copy nature in a servile way; I am forced to interpret nature and submit it to the spirit of the picture. From the relationship I have found in all the tones there must result a living harmony of colors, a harmony analogous to that of a musical composition.”

— Henri Matisse

49. “Drawing is putting a line around an idea.”

— Henri Matisse

50. “To draw is to make an idea precise. Drawing is the precision of thought.”

— Henri Matisse