If one wants to be active, one must not be afraid of going wrong, one must not be afraid of making mistakes now and then. Many people think that they will become good just by doing no harm -- but that's a lie.... That way lies stagnation, mediocrity.

I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God's help I shall succeed.

Great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed.

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!!!

The world concerns me only in so far as I have a certain debt and duty to it, because I have lived in it for thirty years and owe to it to leave behind some souvenir in the shape of drawings and paintings – not done to please any particular movement, but within which a genuine human sentiment is expressed.

In general, and most especially with artists, I pay as much attention to the man who does the work, as to the work itself.

The wheat field has ...poetry; it is like a memory of something one has once seen. We can only make our pictures speak.