Man is not on the earth solely for his own happiness. He is there to realize great things for humanity.

We have very beautiful bad weather here at present - rain, wind, thunder - but with splendid effects; that's why I like it.

One can speak poetry just by arranging colors well, just as one can say comforting things in music.

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.

One must work and dare if one really wants to live.

Art is but imitation of nature.

If you study Japanese art you see a man who is undoubtedly wise, philosophic and intelligent, who spends his time how? In studying the distance between the earth and the moon? No. In studying the policy of Bismarck? No. He studies a single blade of grass. But this blade of grass leads him to draw every plant and then the seasons, the wide aspects of the countryside, then animals, then the human figure. So he passes his life, and life is too short to do the whole.