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

The pure, frank sentiments we hold in our hearts are the only truthful sources of art.

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.

The painter should paint not only what he has in front of him, but also what he sees inside himself. If he sees nothing within, then he should stop painting what is in front of him.

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