Paul Klee quotes

Art doesn't reflect what we see; it makes us see. (Paul Klee)
A single day is enough to make us a little larger or, another time, a little smaller. View quote
Paul Klee
When looking at any significant work of art, remember that a more significant one probably has had to be sacrificed. View quote
Paul Klee
Everything vanishes around me, and works are born as if out of the void. Ripe, graphic fruits fall off. My hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will. View quote
Paul Klee
Beauty is as relative as light and dark. Thus, there exists no beautiful woman, none at all, because you are never certain that a still far more beautiful woman will not appear and completely shame the supposed beauty of the first. View quote
Paul Klee
A drawing is simply a line going for a walk. View quote
Paul Klee
Children also have artistic ability, and there is wisdom in there having it! The more helpless they are, the more instructive are the examples they furnish us; and they must be preserved free of corruption from an early age. View quote
Paul Klee
The more horrible this world (as today, for instance), the more abstract our art, whereas a happy world brings forth an art of the here and now. View quote
Paul Klee
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. View quote
Paul Klee
It is interesting to observe how real the object remains, in spite of all abstractions. View quote
Paul Klee
A line is a dot that went for a walk. (Paul Klee)
My mirror probes down to the heart. I write words on the forehead and around the corners of the mouth. My human faces are truer than the real ones. View quote
Paul Klee
One eye sees, the other feels. View quote
Paul Klee
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. View quote
Paul Klee
To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers. View quote
Paul Klee
We document, explain, justify, construct, organize: these are good things, but we do not succeed in coming to the whole... But we may as well calm down: construction is not absolute. Our virtue is this: by cultivating the exact we have laid the foundations for a science of art, including the unknown X. View quote
Paul Klee
The beautiful, which is perhaps inseparable from art, is not after all tied to the subject, but to the pictorial representation. In this way and in no other does art overcome the ugly without avoiding it. View quote
Paul Klee
It is possible that a picture will move far away from Nature and yet find its way back to reality. The faculty of memory, experience at a distance produces pictorial associations. View quote
Paul Klee
The pictorial work was born of movement, is itself recorded movement, and is assimilated through movement (eye muscles). View quote
Paul Klee
Art should be like a holiday: something to give a man the opportunity to see things differently and to change his point of view. View quote
Paul Klee
Polyphonic painting is superior to music in that, here, the time element becomes a spatial element. The notion of simultaneity stands out even more richly. (Paul Klee)
First of all, the art of living; then as my ideal profession, poetry and philosophy, and as my real profession, plastic arts; in the last resort, for lack of income, illustrations. View quote
Paul Klee
Color possesses me. I don't have to pursue it. It will possess me always, I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour: Color and I are one. I am a painter. View quote
Paul Klee
Colour has taken hold of me; no longer do I have to chase after it. I know that it has hold of me forever. That is the significance of this blessed moment. View quote
Paul Klee
Genesis as formal motion is the essential thing in a work. In the beginning the motif, insertion of energy, sperm. Works as shaping of form in the material sense: the primitive female component. Works as form - determining sperm: the primitive female component. My drawings belong to the male realm. View quote
Paul Klee