Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation... even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.

If you call painting dumb poetry, the painter may call poetry blind painting.

Small rooms or dwellings set the mind in the right path, large ones cause it to go astray.

Painting is concerned with the ten things you can see: these are darkness and brightness, substance and color, form and place, remoteness and nearness, movement and rest.

A man of supreme folly: his life flies away while he is merely hoping to enjoy it.

Here is a thing which the more it is needed the more it is rejected: and this is advice, which is unwillingly heeded by those who most need it, that is to say, by the ignorant.

It is a far worthier thing to read by the light of experience than to adorn oneself with the labors of others.