True artists are almost the only men who do their work for pleasure.

Even with all the documents, you can never forge nature

The more simple we are, the more complete we become.

Mystery is like a kind of atmosphere which bathes the greatest works of the masters.

The sculptor represents the transition from one pose to another he indicates how insensibly the first glides into the second. In his work we still see a part of what was and we discover a part of what is to be.

Art is the pleasure of a spirit that enters nature and discovers that it too has a soul.

A mediocre man copying nature will never produce a work of art, because he really looks without seeing, and though he may have noted each detail minutely, the result will be flat and without character... the artist on the contrary, sees; that is to say, his eye, grafted on his heart, reads deeply into the bosom of nature.