Top 120 Paul Gauguin Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Where do we come from? What are We? Where are we going?”

— Paul Gauguin

2. “Stay firmly in your path and dare; be wild two hours a day!”

— Paul Gauguin

3. “I shut my eyes in order to see.”

— Paul Gauguin

4. “The single most powerful tool for winning a negotiation is the ability to get up and walk away from the table without a deal.”

— Paul Gauguin

5. “Whatever may happen the sun will rise tomorrow as it rose to-day, beneficent and serene.”

— Paul Gauguin

6. “Go on working, freely and furiously, and you will make progress.”

— Paul Gauguin

7. “Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise, what would become of beauty?”

— Paul Gauguin

8. “Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams.”

— Paul Gauguin

9. “Life is merely a fraction of a second. An infinitely small amount of time to fulfill our desires, our dreams, our passions.”

— Paul Gauguin

10. “I have come to an unalterable decision – to go and live forever in Polynesia. Then I can end my days in peace and freedom, without thoughts of tomorrow and this eternal struggle against idiots.”

— Paul Gauguin

11. “I sit at my door, smoking a cigarette and sipping my absinthe, and I enjoy every day without a care in the world.”

— Paul Gauguin

12. “Happiness and work rose up together with the sun, radiant like it.”

— Paul Gauguin

13. “Art is either revolution or plagiarism.”

— Paul Gauguin

14. “Let everything about you breathe the calm and peace of the soul.”

— Paul Gauguin

15. “A bit of advice, don’t copy nature too closely. Art is an abstraction; as you dream amid nature, extrapolate art from it, and concentrate on what you will create as a result.”

— Paul Gauguin

16. “Oh yes! he loved yellow, this good Vincent, this painter from Holland – those glimmers of sunlight rekindled his soul, that abhorred the fog, that needed the warmth.”

— Paul Gauguin

17. “Civilization is what makes you sick.”

— Paul Gauguin

18. “The cyclone ends. The sun returns; the lofty coconut trees lift up their plumes again; man does likewise. The great anguish is over; joy has returned; the sea smiles like a child.”

— Paul Gauguin

19. “If you see a tree as blue, then make it blue.”

— Paul Gauguin

20. “It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block.”

— Paul Gauguin

21. “And here in my isolation I can grow stronger. Poetry seems to come of itself, without effort, and I need only let myself dream a little while painting to suggest it.”

— Paul Gauguin

22. “Sooner or later people will learn to recognize your worth.”

— Paul Gauguin

23. “Stressing output is the key to improving productivity, while looking to increase activity can result in just the opposite.”

— Paul Gauguin

24. “A meter of green is greener than a centimeter.”

— Paul Gauguin

25. “The flat sound of my wooden clogs on the cobblestones, deep, hollow and powerful, is the note I seek in my painting.”

— Paul Gauguin

26. “Life is hardly more than a fraction of a second. Such a little time to prepare oneself for eternity!”

— Paul Gauguin

27. “Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.”

— Paul Gauguin

28. “Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one’s will. Virtue, good, evil are nothing but words, unless one takes them apart in order to build something with them; they do not win their true meaning until one knows how to apply them.”

— Paul Gauguin

29. “There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite.”

— Paul Gauguin

30. “There is no such thing as exaggerated art. I even believe that there is salvation only in extreme.”

— Paul Gauguin

31. “Seek art and abstraction in nature by dreaming in the presence of it.”

— Paul Gauguin

32. “Oh mysterious world of all light, thou hast made a light shine within me, and I have grown in admiration of thy antique beauty, which is the immemorial youth of nature.”

— Paul Gauguin

33. “Follow the masters! But why should one follow them? The only reason they are masters is that they didn’t follow anybody!”

— Paul Gauguin

34. “The critics can say stupid things and we can enjoy them, if we have the legitimate feeling of superiority – the satisfaction of a duty accomplished.”

— Paul Gauguin

35. “It is better to paint from memory, for thus your work will be your own...”

— Paul Gauguin

36. “Why did I hesitate to put all this glory of the sun on my canvas?”

— Paul Gauguin

37. “The landscape with its violent, pure colours dazzled and blinded me. I was always uncertain...”

— Paul Gauguin

38. “In order to produce something new, you have to return to the original source, to the childhood of mankind.”

— Paul Gauguin

39. “Silence! I am learning to know the silence of a Tahitian night.”

— Paul Gauguin

40. “Wherever I go I need a period of incubation so that I may learn the essence of nature, which never wishes to be understood or yield herself.”

— Paul Gauguin

41. “The work of a man is the explanation of the man.”

— Paul Gauguin

42. “I am a great artist and I know it. It’s because I am that I have endured such sufferings.”

— Paul Gauguin

43. “In Europe men and women have intercourse because they love each other. In the South Seas they love each other because they have had intercourse. Who is right?”

— Paul Gauguin

44. “In art, all who have done something other than their predecessors have merited the epithet of revolutionary; and it is they alone who are masters.”

— Paul Gauguin

45. “Machines have come, art has fled, and I am far from thinking photography can help us.”

— Paul Gauguin

46. “Night is here. All is at rest. My eyes close in order to see without actually understanding the dream that flees before men infinite space; and I experience the languorous sensation produced by the mournful procession of my hopes.”

— Paul Gauguin

47. “A critic in my house sees some paintings. Greatly perturbed, he asks for my drawings. My drawings? Never! They are my letters, my secrets.”

— Paul Gauguin

48. “Without delay I began work, without hesitation and all of a fever.”

— Paul Gauguin

49. “My God! How terrible these money questions are for an artist!”

— Paul Gauguin

50. “Poor artist! You gave away part of your soul when you painted the picture which you are now trying to dispose of.”

— Paul Gauguin