A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.

The greatest artist has no conception which a single block of white marble does not potentially contain within its mass, but only a hand obedient to the mind can penetrate to this image.

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

I cannot live under pressures from patrons, let alone paint.

Patience is eternal genius

I serve for the love of God and in Him have all my hope.

Led by long years to my last hours, too late, O world, I know your joys for what they are. You promise a peace which is not yours to give and the repose that dies before it is born. The years of fear and shame to which Heaven now set a term, renew nothing in me but the old sweet error in which, living overlong a man kills his soul with no gain to his body. I say and I know having put it to the proof, that he has the better part in Heaven whose death falls nearest his birth.