Make people's portraits in familiar and typical attitudes.

You must aim high, not in what you are going to do at some future date, but in what you are going to make yourself do to-day. Otherwise, working is just a waste of time.

Do portraits of people in familiar and typical attitudes, above all give to their face the same choice of expression that one gives to their body.

Everyone has talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it at fifty.

One must do the same subject over again ten times, a hundred times. In art nothing must resemble an accident, not even movement.

Art critic! Is that a profession? When I think we are stupid enough, we painters, to solicit those people's compliments and to put ourselves into their hands! What shame! Should we even accept that they talk about our work?

It requires courage to make a frontal attack on nature through the broad planes and the large lines and it is cowardly to do it by the facets and details. It is a battle.