The artist is chosen by God to fulfill his commands and must never be overwhelmed by public opinion.

My father suffered much and toiled painfully all his life, for he had no resources other than the proceeds of his trade from which to support himself and his wife and family.

No single man can be taken as a model for a perfect figure, for no man lives on earth who is endowed with the whole of beauty.

Love and delight are better teachers than compulsion.

Art is embedded in nature and they who can extract it, have it.

As I grew older, I realized that it was much better to insist on the genuine forms of nature, for simplicity is the greatest adornment of art.

Sane judgment abhors nothing so much as a picture perpetrated with no technical knowledge, although with plenty of care and diligence.