And in a picture I want to say something comforting, as music is comforting.

The great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together. And great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed.

I am unable to describe exactly what is the matter with me; now and then there are horrible fits of anxiety, apparently without cause, or otherwise a feeling of emptiness and fatigue in the head.

The sight of stars always sets me dreaming just as naively as those black dots on a map set me dreaming of towns and villages. Why should these points of light in the firmament, I wonder, be less accessible than the dark ones on the map of France? We take a train to go to Torascon or Roven and we take death to a star.

One must spoil as many canvases as one succeeds with.

Ah! My dear friend painting is to us what the music of Berlioz and Wagner was before us - a consolatory art for sore hearts! And yet there are only a few like you and me who feel it!!!

Rembrandt is so deeply mysterious that he says things for which there are no words in any language.