Cold exactitude is not art; ingenious artifice, when it pleases or when it expresses, is art itself.

Draughtsmen may be made, but colourists are born.

Do not be troubled for a language, cultivate your soul and she will show herself.

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.

Glory to that Homer of painting, to that father of warmth and enthusiasm... he really paints men.

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.

The things one experiences alone with oneself are very much stronger and purer.