Listen! There was never an artistic period. There was never an art-loving nation.

I maintain that two and two would continue to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five.

As light fades and the shadows deepen, all petty and exacting details vanish, everything trivial disappears, and I see things as they are in great strong masses: the buttons are lost, but the sitter remains; the sitter is lost, but the shadow remains; the shadow is lost, but the picture remains. And that, night cannot efface from the painter's imagination.

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.

People will forgive anything but beauty and talent. So I am doubly unpardonable.

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.