Even with all the documents, you can never forge nature

I believe that photography can create great works of art, but hitherto it has been extraordinarily bourgeois and babbling. (1908)

One must work, nothing but work, and one must have patience.

Patience is also a form of action.

The artist has only to trust his eyes.

There should be no argument in regard to morality in art. There is no morality in nature.

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.