Art is limited to the infinite, and beginning there cannot progress.

The vast majority of English folk cannot and will not consider a picture as a picture, apart from any story which it may be supposed to tell.

Nature is usually wrong.

Industry in art is a necessity - not a virtue - and any evidence of the same, in the production, is a blemish, not a quality; a proof, not of achievement, but of absolutely insufficient work, for work alone will efface the footsteps of work.

You shouldn't say it is not good. You should say, you do not like it; and then, you know, you're perfectly safe.

As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight and the subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of color.

I can't tell you if genius is hereditary, because heaven has granted me no offspring.