Thanks to our cinctures and corsets we have succeeded in making an artificial being out of woman. She is an anomaly, and Nature herself, obedient to the laws of heredity, aids us in complicating and enervating her. We carefully keep her in a state of nervous weakness and muscular inferiority, and in guarding her from fatigue, we take away from her possibilities of development. Thus modeled on a bizarre ideal of slenderness to which, strangely enough, we continue to adhere, our women have nothing in common with us, and this, perhaps, may not be without grave moral and social disadvantages.

Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one's will. Virtue, good, evil are nothing but words, unless one takes them apart in order to build something with them; they do not win their true meaning until one knows how to apply them.

Go on working, freely and furiously, you will make progress and sooner or later your worth will be recognised, if you have any.

And here in my isolation I can grow stronger. Poetry seems to come of itself, without effort, and I need only let myself dream a little while painting to suggest it.

The flat sound of my wooden clogs on the cobblestones, deep, hollow and powerful, is the note I seek in my painting.

Stay firmly in your path and dare; be wild two hours a day!

One's state of mind is three-quarters of what counts, so it has to be carefully nurtured if you want to do something great and lasting.