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.

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.

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

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

Frederic Leighton to James McNeill Whistler: 'My dear Whistler, you leave your pictures in such a sketchy, unfinished state. Why don't you ever finish them?' James McNeill Whistler to Frederic Leighton: 'My dear Leighton, why do you ever begin yours?

It takes a long time for a man to look like his portrait.