Quotes taken from Auguste Rodin, Art, (1912), Boston, 1917.
On Nature and Realism in Art:
"I obey Nature in everything, and I never pretend to command her. My only ambition is to be serviley faithful to her." p. 30
"I see all the truth, and not only that of the outside. I accentuate the lines which best express the spiritual state that I interpret." p. 31
"...the artist does not see Nature as she appears to the vulgar, because his emotion reveals to him the hidden truths beneath appearances." p. 33
On Beauty:
"Beauty is character and expression. Well, there is nothing in nature which has more character than the human body. .... The human body is, above all, the mirror of the soul, and from the soul comes its greatest beauty." pp. 117-118
On Mystery:
"It is a general belief that we live only through our senses, and that the world of appearances suffices us. We are taken for children who, intoxicated with changing colors, amuse themselves with the shapes of things as with dolls. we are misunderstood. Lines and colors are only to us the symbols of hidden realities. Our eyes plunge beneath the surface to the meaning of things, and when afterwards we reproduce the form, we endow it with the spiritual meaning which it covers. An artist worthy of the name should express all the truth of nature, not only the exterior truth, but also, and above all, the inner truth." pp. 177-178