Good painting is nothing else but a copy of the perfections of God and a reminder of His painting. Finally, good painting is a music and a melody which intellect only can appreciate, and with great difficulty.

Can't you see the angel imprisoned in the block of stone trying to get out? I am trying to free him

The great tragedy of life is not that people set their sights too high and fail to achieve their goals but that they set their sights too low and do.

For those who feel it, nothing makes the soul so religious and pure as the endeavor to create something perfect; for God is perfection, and whoever strives after it, is striving after something divine. True painting is only the image of the perfection of God, a shadow of the pencil with which he paints, a melody, a striving after harmony.

Serene I fold my hands and wait.

However rich I may have been, I have always lived like a poor man.

My soul can find no staircase to Heaven unless it be through Earth's loveliness.