I paint for myself. I don't know how to do anything else, anyway. Also I have to earn my living, and occupy myself.

I should have been, I don't know, a con-man, a robber or a prostitute. But it was vanity that made me choose painting, vanity and chance.

The only hope [of science] ... is in genuine induction.

Houses are built to live in, and not to look on: therefore let use be preferred before uniformity.

It's such an extraordinary supple medium that you never do quite know what paint will do.

Learning hath his infancy, when it is but beginning and almost childish; then his youth, when it is luxuriant and juvenile; then his strength of years, when it is solid and reduced; and lastly his old age, when it waxeth dry and exhaust.

Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.