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.

I must stay alone and know that I am alone to contemplate and feel nature in full; I have to surrender myself to what encircles me, I have to merge with my clouds and rocks in order to be what I am.

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

A painting which does not take its inspiration from the heart is nothing more than futile juggling.

God is everywhere, in the smallest grain of sand.

All authentic art is conceived at a sacred moment and nourished in a blessed hour; an inner impulse creates it, often without the artist being aware of it.

What the newer landscape artists see in a circle of a hundred degrees in Nature they press together unmercifully into an angle of vision of only forty-five degrees. And furthermore, what is in Nature separated by large spaces, is compressed into a cramped space and overfills and oversatiates the eye, creating an unfavorable and disquieting effect on the viewer.