The first virtue of a painting is to be a feast for the eyes.

The outcome of my days is always the same; an infinite desire for what one never gets; a void one cannot fill; an utter yearning to produce in all ways, to battle as much as possible against time that drags us along, and the distractions that throw a veil over our soul.

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.

A picture is nothing but a bridge between the soul of the artist and that of the spectator.

If you are not skillful enough to sketch a man jumping out of a window in the time it takes him to fall from the fourth storey to the ground, you will never be able to produce great works.

Do all the work you can; that is the whole philosophy of the good way of life.

The source of genius is imagination alone, the refinement of the senses that sees what others do not see, or sees them differently.