The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.

Love a friend, love a wife, something, whatever you like, but one must love with a lofty and serious intimate sympathy, with strength, with intelligence, and one must always try to know deeper, better, and more.

Well, I am ploughing on my canvases as they do on their fields (the peasants). It goes badly enough in our profession - in fact that has always been so, but at the moment it is very bad.

An artist needn't be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men.

l can do very well without God both in my life and in my painting, but l cannot, ill as I am, do without something which is greater than l, which is my life — the power to create.

Love is eternal -- the aspect may change, but not the essence. There is the same difference in a person before and after he is in love as there is in an unlighted lamp and one that is burning. The lamp was there and was a good lamp, but now it is shedding light too, and that is its real function. And love makes one calmer about many things, and that way, one is more fit for one's work.

Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.