If I haven't fought for my country at least I'll paint for her.

Talent does whatever it wants to do. Genius does only what it can.

[Photography is] in some ways false just because it is so exact.

I believe it safe to say that all progress must lead, not to further progress, but finally to the negation of progress, a return to the point of departure.

I am carrying out my plan, so long formulated, of keeping a journal. What I most keenly wish is not to forget that I am writing for myself alone. Thus I shall always tell the truth, I hope, and thus I shall improve myself. These pages will reproach me for my changes of mind.

Real beauty in the arts is eternal and would be accepted at all periods; but it wears the dress of its century: something of that dress clings to it, and woe to the works which appear in periods when the general taste is corrupted.

What moves those of genius, what inspires their work is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.