Top 80 Paul Klee Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “My hand is entirely the implement of a distant sphere. It is not my head that functions but something else, something higher, something somewhere remote. I must have great friends there, dark as well as bright. They are all very kind to me.”

— Paul Klee

52. “All is well with me. The rain doesn’t reach me, my room is well heated, what more can one ask for? There’s no shortage of work, either...”

— Paul Klee

53. “Light and the rational forms are locked in combat; light sets them into motion, bends what is straight, makes parallels oval, inscribes circles in the intervals, makes the intervals active.”

— Paul Klee

54. “It is the artistic mission to penetrate as far as may be toward that secret ground where primal law feeds growth.”

— Paul Klee

55. “The artist of today is more than an improved camera, he is more complex, richer, and wider. He is a creature on the earth and a creature within the whole, that is, a creature on a star among stars.”

— Paul Klee

56. “A certain fire pretends to be alive; it awakens. Working its way along the hand as a conductor, it reaches the support and engulfs it; then a leaping spark closes the circle it was to trace, coming back to the eye and beyond.”

— Paul Klee

57. “Art does not render what is visible, but renders visible.”

— Paul Klee

58. “Sometimes I dream of a work of really great breadth, ranging through the whole region of object, meaning, and style. This, I fear, will remain a dream, but it is a good thing to bear the possibility occasionally in mind.”

— Paul Klee

59. “Reduction! One wants to say more than nature and one makes the impossible mistake of wanting to say it with more means than she, instead of fewer.”

— Paul Klee

60. “I must begin, not with hypothesis, but with specific instances, no matter how minute.”

— Paul Klee

61. “Like people, a picture has a skeleton, muscles and skin.”

— Paul Klee

62. “Color has got me. I no longer need to chase after it. It has got me for ever. I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour.”

— Paul Klee

63. “One does not lash hat lies at a distance. The foibles that we ridicule must at least be a little bit our own. Only then will the work be a part of our own flesh. The garden must be weeded.”

— Paul Klee

64. “A tendency toward the abstract is inherent in linear expression: graphic imagery being confined to outlines has a fairy-like quality and at the same time can achieve great precision.”

— Paul Klee

65. “It is a great difficulty and a great necessity to have to start with the smallest.”

— Paul Klee

66. “Frightened, I jump up from the bank, the struggle begins anew. Bitterness has returned. I am not Pan in the reed, I am merely a human being and want to climb a few steps, but really climb them...”

— Paul Klee

67. “To achieve vital harmony in a picture it must be constructed out of parts in themselves incomplete, brought into harmony only at the last stroke.”

— Paul Klee

68. “Art makes something a lot more visible or audible.”

— Paul Klee

69. “Colour and I are one.”

— Paul Klee

70. “By using patches of color and tone it is possible to capture every natural impression in the simplest way, freshly and immediately.”

— Paul Klee

71. “Satire must not be a kind of superfluous ill will, but ill will from a higher point of view. Ridiculous man, divine God. Or else, hatred against the bogged-down vileness of average man as against the possible heights that humanity might attain.”

— Paul Klee

72. “Each energy calls for its complementary energy to achieve self-contained stability based on the play of energies.”

— Paul Klee

73. “Everything vanishes round me and good works rise from me of their own accord.”

— Paul Klee

74. “He has found his style, when he cannot do otherwise.”

— Paul Klee

75. “The artist does not ascribe to the natural form of appearance the same convincing significance as the realists who are his critics. He does not feel so intimately bound to that reality, because he cannot see in the formal products of nature the essence of the creative process. He is more concerned with formative powers than with formal products.”

— Paul Klee

76. “The way to form transcends its own destination, goes beyond the end of the way itself.”

— Paul Klee

77. “I still come closest to success with drawing. When I use color the results are dubious, for these painfully gained experiences bear less fruit.”

— Paul Klee

78. “I still come closest to success with drawing.”

— Paul Klee

79. “Kunst gibt nicht das Sichtbare wieder, sondern Kunst macht sichtbar.”

— Paul Klee

80. “The longer a line, the more of the time element it contains. Distance is time whereas a surface is apprehended more in terms of the moment.”

— Paul Klee

81. “In my productive activity, every time a type grows beyond the stage of its genesis, and I have about reached the goal, the intensity gets lost very quickly, and I have to look for new ways.”

— Paul Klee

82. “The worst state of affairs is when science begins to concern itself with art.”

— Paul Klee

83. “It is interesting to observe how real the object remains, in spite of all abstractions.”

— Paul Klee

84. “Gradually compositions make an appearance again. Political – satirical – conceits expressed in one figure or a few.”

— Paul Klee