But the idols of the Market Place are the most troublesome of all: idols which have crept into the understanding through their alliances with words and names. For men believe that their reason governs words. But words turn and twist the understanding. This it is that has rendered philosophy and the sciences inactive. Words are mostly cut to the common fashion and draw the distinctions which are most obvious to the common understanding. Whenever an understanding of greater acuteness or more diligent observation would alter those lines to suit the true distinctions of nature, words complain.

There is superstition in avoiding superstition.

Vices of the time; vices of the man.

When I paint I am ageless, I just have the pleasure or the difficulty of painting.

Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest

Who ever is out of patience is out of possession of their soul.

I would like my pictures to look as if a human being had passed between them, like a snail, leaving a trail of the human presence and memory trace of past events, as the snail leaves its slime.