top of page
"A painter must think of everything he sees as being there entirely for his own use and pleasure."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Being quotes

"Great is the difference betwixt a man's being frightened at, and humbled for his sins."

"It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad."

"The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down."

"To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved."

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."

"And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness."
Explore more quotes by Lucian Freud

"There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so."

"As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does."

"Since the model he so faithfully copies is not going to be hung up next to the picture... it is of no interest whether it is an accurate copy of the model."

"I remember Francis Bacon would say that he felt he was giving art what he thought it previously lacked. With me, it's what Yeats called the fascination with what's difficult. I'm only trying to do what I can't do."

"The picture is all he feels about it, all he thinks worth preserving of it, all he invests it with. If all the qualities which a painter took from the model for his picture were really taken, no person could be painted twice."

"When I look at a body it gives me choice of what to put in a painting, what will suit me and what won't."

"The model should only serve the very private function for the painter of providing the starting point for his excitement."
bottom of page