Toulouse Lautrec Quotes

The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.

Love is when the desire to be desired takes you so badly that you feel you could die of it

We are all are cripples in some way. [Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec]

Everywhere and always ugliness has its beautiful aspects; it is thrilling to discover them where nobody else has noticed them.

All confined things die.

I like big butts,” Renoir explained to Toulouse-Lautrec.

I would paint more farms," said Toulouse-Lautrec, "but they always put them so far from the bar.

I am alone all day, I read a little but it gives me a headache. I draw and I paint, as much as I can, so much so that my hand gets tired and when it begins to get dark I wait to see if Jeanne d'Armagnac [one of the cousins] will come and sit by my bed. She comes sometimes and tries to distract me and play with me, and I listen to her speak without daring to look at her, she is so tall and so beautiful! And I am neither tall nor beautiful.

Those who say they don't care a damn do care a damn, because those who don't care a damn, don't say they don't care a damn.

I like big butts," Renoir explained to Toulouse-Lautrec.

This was the only work of Toulouse-Lautrec’s where he was literally and figuratively baring himself, as if to say that love renders you naked and vulnerable.

At his trial Clement said: “the policeman arrested me in the name of the law; I hit him in the name of liberty.” Then Clement said: “when society refuses you the right to existence, you must take it.

Toulouse-Lautrec syndrome. I had never seen a case before, but I had heard it described. Named for its most famous sufferer (who did not yet exist, I reminded myself), it was a degenerative disease of bone and connective tissue. Victims often appeared normal, if sickly, until their early teens, when the long bones of the legs, under the stress of bearing a body upright, began to crumble and collapse upon themselves.

Toulouse-Lautrec blew in, winded from six flights of stairs, but still as hilarious and ribald as ever. “Vincent,” he exclaimed, while shaking hands, “I passed an undertaker on the stairs. Was he looking for you or me?” “For you, Lautrec! He couldn’t get any business out of me.” “I’ll make you a little wager, Vincent. I’ll bet your name comes ahead of mine in his little book.” “You’re on. What’s the stake?” “Dinner at the Café Athens, and an evening at the Opéra.” “I wish you fellows would make your jokes a trifle less macabre,” said Theo, smiling faintly.

I have consumed more drink than the first one hundred men you will pass on the street or meet in the madhouse. I scratch my belly and dream of the albatross. I have joined the great drunks of the centuries: Li Po, Toulouse-Lautrec, Crane, Faulkner. I have been selected but by whom?

During the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth, France enjoyed an upsurge of artistic flourishing that became known as La Belle Epoque. It was a time of change that heralded both art nouveau and post impressionism, when painters as diverse as Monet, Cezanne and Toulouse Lautrec worked. It was an age of extremes, when Proust and Anatole France were fashionable along with the notorious Monsieur Willy, Colette's husband. On the decorative arts, Mucha, Gallé and Lalique were enjoying success; and the theatre Lugné-Poe was introducing the grave works of Ibsen at the same time as Parisians were enjoying the spectacle of the can-can of Hortense Schneider. Paris was the crossroads of a new and many-faceted culture, a culture that was predominately feminine in form, for, above all, la belle Epoque was the age of women. Women dominated the cultural scene. On the one hand, there was Comtesse Greffulhe, the patron of Proust and Maeterlinck, who introduced greyhound racing into France; Winaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac, for whom Stravinsky wrote Renard; Misia Sert, the discoverer of Chanel and Diaghilev's closest friend. On the other were the great dancers of the Moulin Rouge, immortalised by Toulouse lautrec — Jane Avril, Yvette Guilbert, la Goulue; as well as such celebrated dramatic actresses as the great Sarah Bernhardt. It would not be possible to speak of La belle Epoque without the great courtesans who, in many ways, perfectly symbolized the era, chief of which were Liane de Pougy, Émilienne d'Alençon, Cléo de Mérode and La Belle Otero.

Toulouse-Lautrec often worked while under the influence of a concoction he called the Earthquake Cocktail, a potent mixture of absinthe and cognac. Gabriel made do with Cortese di Gavi and Debussy

The end of the nineteenth century is often referred to as the "fin de siècle" because of its philosophy of decadence, and the first decade of the twentieth century is referred to as "La belle Époque" because of a sense of optimism and confidence. In both periods, Paris was a breeding ground for artistic and literary movements that challenged the establishment and sought to come to terms with a complex society no longer easily definable. Paris was the center of activity as well as the favored subject of numerous artists. The work of naturalists, symbolists, decadents, Incohérents, and Nabis presented fresh visions of life and society during this important period of "modern" French art.

Too tight, Toulouse?”, as Toulouse-Lautrec’s tailor said, fitting him for new pants, Tuscaloosa, the fact that what was that thing about Tuscaloosa, that Groucho Marx line, about how in Africa the elephant tusks are hard to remove but in Alabama the Tuscaloosa,

El récord de la hora fue objetivo de los grandes desde que Henri Desgrange, futuro «padre» del Tour de Francia, consiguió la primera marca moderna en el Buffalo parisino, el de Toulouse-Lautrec, Montmartre con sol, bailarinas del Folies Bergère… Era 1893 y Desgrange llevaba en el manillar de su bici una botella con un litro de leche «por si me llega desfallecimiento»…

Suzanne was still striving to steer Maurice towards a more salubrious way of life in early September 1901, when a shattering piece of news reached her: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was dead.

Take her home, eat with her, and sip wine, laugh softly at sad things, make love to her and fall asleep in her arms; that's what he wanted to do. The Laundress - Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, 1884.

The crowd had grown sweatier and louder and drunker. It was like being trapped in a Toulouse-Lautrec painting, green-lit faces spinning around me with ghoulish expressions. I wanted to set Bad on them, all teeth and burnished bronze fur. I wanted to scream myself hoarse. I wanted to draw a door in the air, a door to somewhere else, and walk through it.

The city has dealt with the likes of Toulouse Lautrec, Van Gogh, Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, not to mention Mr. Bonaparte. And the Moulin Rouge is there as well. Really, Parisians have seen it all, if you know what I mean. I should be just a tiny bleep on their emotional radar, which is perfectly fine with me.