The rare few, who, early in life have rid themselves of the friendship of the many.

Nature is very rarely right, to such an extent even, that it might almost be said that nature is usually wrong.

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

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.

The world is divided into two classes - invalids and nurses.

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.

It is for the artist... in portrait painting to put on canvas something more than the face the model wears for that one day; to paint the man, in short, as well as his features.