"What matters poverty? What matters anything to him who is enamoured of our art? Does he not carry in himself every joy and every beauty?"

Sarah Bernhardt’s words evoke the consuming passion and self-sufficiency of the true artist. For the individual deeply in love with art, external conditions like poverty become irrelevant, as their inner world is enriched by creation and inspiration. The artist transcends the material hardships of existence because art fills their spirit with purpose, satisfaction, and delight. Whether faced with deprivation or abundance, their foremost loyalty is to the muse they serve, to the transformative power of artistic endeavor.

Bernhardt emphasizes how artistic devotion provides its own rewards, eclipsing worldly concerns. A genuine artist finds joy not in external possessions or comfort but in the act of creation itself. This passion acts as an antidote to suffering, and a shield against despair. Art becomes a wellspring within, a place from which the artist draws inexhaustible beauty and happiness. It sustains them when external circumstances might otherwise defeat hope.

Her reflection also touches on the notion of the artist as possessing a heightened sensitivity to beauty, an ability to perceive wonder where others may see only hardship. The joys found in art are self-generated. Artistic vision transforms the ordinary and redeems life from bleakness. Bernhardt proposes that the greatest riches are internal: the joys and beauties an artist carries “in himself” are ultimately more sustaining and real than any wealth or security provided by society.

Furthermore, this idea challenges the notion of success as measured only by material standards. Art becomes a value in itself, not a means to an end. The hunger that drives the artist is not for money or recognition, but for expression, for communion with the sublime. In the passionate pursuit of art, the artist achieves a kind of inner abundance that not even poverty can diminish. By loving art above all, the artist discovers every joy and every beauty within themselves, rendering external lack comparatively insignificant.