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.

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.

I remember that at one time I always made a drawing before going to bed!! - Of myself I mean - though I finally destroyed most of them.

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

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.

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.

We look at a painting to know the painter; it's his company we are after, not his skill.