I am very anxious to please the public, particularly as it lives and lets live.

Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.

God could cause us considerable embarrassment by revealing all the secrets of nature to us: we should not know what to do for sheer apathy and boredom.

Objects in pictures should so be arranged as by their very position to tell their own story.

The senses do not deceive us, but the judgment does.

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honour or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

Nothing will change the fact that I cannot produce the least thing without absolute solitude.