Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.
– Auguste Rodin
Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which nature herself is animated.
– Auguste Rodin
I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need.
– Auguste Rodin
I invent nothing, I rediscover.
– Auguste Rodin
Inside you there's an artist you don't know about. He's not interested in how things look different in moonlight.
– Auguste Rodin
Man enjoys living on the edge of his dreams and neglects the real things of the world which are so beautiful. The ignorant and indifferent destroy beautiful things merely by looking at the marble. Things that remake the soul of him who understands them.
– Auguste Rodin
Man's naked form belongs to no particular moment in history; it is eternal, and can be looked upon with joy by the people of all ages.
– Auguste Rodin
The artist is the confidant of nature, flowers carry on dialogues with him through the graceful bending of their stems and the harmoniously tinted nuances of their blossoms. Every flower has a cordial word which nature directs towards him.
– Auguste Rodin
The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation.
– Auguste Rodin
There are unknown forces in nature; when we give ourselves wholly to her, without reserve, she lends them to us; she shows us these forms, which our watching eyes do not see, which our intelligence does not understand or suspect.
– Auguste Rodin
To any artist, worthy of the name, all in nature is beautiful, because his eyes, fearlessly accepting all exterior truth, read there, as in an open book, all the inner truth.
– Auguste Rodin
To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature.
– Auguste Rodin
True artists are almost the only men who do their work for pleasure.
