"If you read some of the Parisian newspapers, among others the 'Figaro', so beloved of the right-thinking public, you must have learned that I am part of a group of artists who opened a private exhibition . You must also have seen what favour this exhibition enjoys in the eyes of these gentlemen . On the other hand, we have been praised in the radical newspaper, but you don't read those ! Well, at least we are getting attention, and we have enough self-esteem not to care. My brother-in-law Edouard Manet is not with us . Speaking of success, he has just been rejected by the Salon; he, too, is perfectly good-humored about his failure."

“Music and painting should never be literary, a very subtle distinction according to Renoir. As soon as I try to represent an individual, their physiognomy and attitudes, I become a literary artist.”

“He is a subtle and brilliant draughtsman.. ..all these preliminary drawings would astonish the public who obviously imagine the 'Impressionists' work at tremendous speed. I don't believe one can go further than this in the study of form in a drawing. I am charmed by his 'Nude Bathers' quite as much as those by Ingres. He tells me that he thinks the nude is absolutely indispensable as an art form.”

“I do not think any man would ever treat a woman as his equal, and it is all I ask because I know my worth.”

“Your phrase: 'I am working hard at growing old', is absolutely me. What if you were always to speak in my place..”

“I say, 'I should like to die', but that's not true at all, I should like to get younger.. ..youth and old age are similar in more ways than one, and they are the two moments in life when one can feel one's own soul which would be a proof that it exists.”

“The tall fellow Bazille has done something I find quite fine: a young girl in a very light dress in the shadow of a tree beyond which one sees a town. There is a good deal of light, sunlight, He is trying to do what we have so often tried to bring off: to paint a figure in the open air. This time I think he has succeed.”