I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.

To stick to the present and not let it pass without drawing some profit from it, that's what I think duty is. ...let us perservere as far as we can rather today than tomorrow.

Yellow is capable of charming God.

Well, do you know what I hope for, once I allow myself to begin to hope? [...] That you find in your love for people something not only to work for, but to comfort and restore you when there is a need.

I can't work without a model. I won't say I turn my back on nature ruthlessly in order to turn a study into a picture, arranging the colors, enlarging and simplifying; but in the matter of form I am too afraid of departing from the possible and the true.

If one has such an encounter it is to be expected it will bring him into conflict, especially conflict with himself, because one sometimes literally does not know what to do or what not to do. But is this struggle and even the mistakes one may make, not better, and do they not develop us more than if we keep systematically away from emotions?

What am I in the eyes of most people - a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person - somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then - even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart.