I, too, find the flower beautiful in its outward appearance. But a deeper beauty lies concealed within.

Every true artist has been inspired more by the beauty of lines and color and the relationships between them than by the concrete subject of the picture.

The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.

Why should art continue to follow nature when every other field has left nature behind?

If you follow nature you will not be able to vanquish the tragic in any real degree in your art... We must free ourselves from our attachment to the external, for only then do we transcend the tragic, and are enabled consciously to contemplate the repose which is within all things.

Evolution is always the work of pioneers, and their followers are always small in number. This following is not a clique; it is the result of all the existing social forces; it is composed of all those who through innate or acquired capacity are ready to represent the existing degree of human revolution.

Recognizing and uniting with the universal therefore gives us the greatest aesthetic satisfaction, the greatest emotion of beauty. The more determinately (consciously) this recognition is experienced, the more intense our happiness. The more determinately (consciously) this union with the universal is felt, the more individual subjectivity declines.