The clear French landscape is as pure as a verse of Racine.

Nature is more depth than surface, the colours are the expressions on the surface of this depth; they rise up from the roots of the world.

We must not be content to memorize the beautiful formulas of our illustrious predecessors. Let us go out and study beautiful nature.

Fruits ... like having their portrait painted. They seem to sit there and ask your forgiveness for fading. Their thought is given off with their perfumes. They come with all their scents, they speak of the fields they have left, the rain which has nourished them, the daybreaks they have seen.

The awareness of our own strength makes us modest.

For an Impressionist to paint from nature is not to paint the subject, but to realize sensations.

The artist must scorn all judgment that is not based on an intelligent observation of character. He must beware of the literary spirit which so often causes a painting to deviate from its true path - the concrete study of nature - to lose itself all too long in intangible speculations.