Truly color is vice! Of course, it can be, and has the right to be one of the finest virtues. Controlled by the strong hand and careful guidance of her Master drawing, color is a splendid Mistress, with a mate worthy of herself, her lover, but her Master likewise, the most magnificent Mistress possible, and the result is evident in all the glorious things that spring from their union.

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

Nature is usually wrong.

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.

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!

If other people are going to talk, conversation becomes impossible.

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.