What an artist learns matters little. What he himself discovers has a real worth for him, and gives him the necessary incitement to work.

- Emil Nolde

Clever people master life; the wise illuminate it and create fresh difficulties.

- Emil Nolde

Sometimes it seems to me that I am capable of absolutely nothing, but that nature through me can accomplish a great deal.

- Emil Nolde

Art is exalted above religion and race. Not a single solitary soul these days believes in the religions of the Assyrians, the Egyptians and the Greek…

- Emil Nolde

The art of an artist must be his own art. It is... always a continuous chain of little inventions, little technical discoveries of ones own, in ones …

- Emil Nolde

Pictures are spiritual beings. The soul of the painter lives within them.

- Emil Nolde

There is silver blue, sky blue and thunder blue. Every colour holds within it a soul, which makes me happy or repels me, and which acts as a stimulus…

- Emil Nolde

Colours in vibration, peeling like silver bells and clanging like bronze bells, proclaiming happiness, passion and love, soul, blood and death.

- Emil Nolde

As an artist I am attracted by decadence, by those who exhaust their lives in the shallow pursuits of pleasure. Occasionally, I feel that spiritually…

- Emil Nolde