One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.

No, no thought to the winnings. One loves because one loves.

The diseases that we civilized people labor under most are melancholy and pessimism.

But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.

Surely the true path is to dive deep into nature.

It is difficult to know oneself, but it isn't easy to paint oneself either.

I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it — keep going, keep going come what may. But what is your final goal, you may ask. That goal will become clearer, will emerge slowly but surely, much as the rough draught turns into a sketch, and the sketch into a painting through the serious work done on it, through the elaboration of the original vague idea and through the consolidation of the first fleeting and passing thought.