When we are working at a difficult task and strive after a good thing, we are fighting a righteous battle, the direct reward of which is that we are kept from much evil.

The great isn't something accidental; it must be willed.

Love always brings difficulties, that is true, but the good side of it is that it gives energy.

There is but one Paris and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even—the French air clears up the brain and does good—a world of good.

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

Art is to console those who are broken by life.

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.