One must spoil as many canvases as one succeeds with.

That this awareness of my own fallibility will prevent me from making many mistakes doesn't alter the fact that I'm bound to make a great many mistakes anyway. But if we fall, we get up again!

In my view, I am often immensely rich, not in money, but (although just now perhaps not all the time) rich because I have found my metier, something I can devote myself to heart and soul and that gives inspiration and meaning to my life.

An artist need not be a minister or a collector in church, but he must have a warm heart for people, and I find it a noble thing that, for example, no winter passed without The Graphic doing something to keep alive sympathy for the poor.

I can't change the fact that my paintings don't sell. But the time will come when people will recognize that they are worth more than the value of the paints used in the picture.

If one feels the need of something grand, something infinite, something that makes one feel aware of God, one need not go far to find it. I think that I see something deeper, more infinite, more eternal than the ocean in the expression of the eyes of a little baby when it wakes in the morning and coos or laughs because it sees the sun shining on its cradle.

Even this artistic life, which we know is not real life, appears to me to be so alive and so vital that it would be a form ingratitude not to be content with it.