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.

I always ask at once, 'Do you drink?' and if she says 'No,' I bow politely and say I am sorry but I fear she will not suit. All good cooks drink.

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

An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.

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

Over and over again did the Attorney-General cry out aloud, in the agony of his cause, 'What is to become of painting if the critics withhold their lash?

Art should be independent of all clap-trap - should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism and the like. All these have no kind of concern with it; and that is why I insist on calling my works 'arrangements' and 'harmonies.