I must stay alone and know that I am alone to contemplate and feel nature in full.

I must stay alone and know that I am alone to contemplate and feel nature in full.

Close your bodily eye, that you may see your picture first with the eye of the spirit. Then bring to light what you have seen in the darkness, that its effect may work back, from without to within.

The artist should paint not only what he sees before him, but also what he sees within him. If, however, he sees nothing within him, then he should also refrain from painting that which he sees before him. Otherwise, his pictures will be like those folding screens behind which one expects to find only the sick or the dead.

The divine is everywhere, even in a grain of sand; there I represented it in the reeds.

You call me a misanthrope because I avoid society. You err; I love society. Yet in order not to hate people, I must avoid their company.

The eye and fantasy feel more attracted by nebulous distance than by that which is close and distinct in front of us.