You cannot be firmly certain about anything. You can only have enough courage and strength to do what you consider to be right. Maybe it turns out that was wrong, but still you would have done his, and it is most important.

He had been standing still; for an artist, one of the more painful forms of death.

Listen, my friend, all forms that exist in God's universe can be found in the human figure. A man's body and face can tell everything he represents. So how could I ever exhaust my interest in it?

Someday my paintings will be hanging in the Louvre. [Vincent Van Gogh]

I do not know a better cure for mental illness than a book.

The paintings that laughed at him merrily from the walls were like nothing he had ever seen or dreamed of. Gone were the flat, thin surfaces. Gone was the sentimental sobriety. Gone was the brown gravy in which Europe had been bathing its pictures for centuries. Here were pictures riotously mad with the sun. With light and air and throbbing vivacity. Paintings of ballet girls backstage, done in primitive reds, greens, and blues thrown next to each other irreverantly. He looked at the signature. Degas.

Who wants to do good in this world must deny oneself. A man does not live on this Earth to be happy or to be honest only - he has to do great things for humanity, achieve the generosity of the spirit and rise above the banality where most of the people are drowning and wasting their days.