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

The work of a master reeks not of the sweat of the brow - suggests no effort - and is finished from its beginning.

To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano.

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

The explanation is quite simple. I wished to be near my mother.

A student of James McNeill Whistler tells the great artist, 'I tend to paint what I see.' Whistler replies, 'Ah! The shock will come when you see what you paint!

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.