The large majority of people are asleep and do not wish to wake up.

I see more and more that my work goes infinitely better when I am properly fed, and the paints are there, and the studio and all that... I wish I could manage to make you really understand that when you give money to artists, you are yourself doing an artist's work, and that I only want my pictures to be of such a quality that you will not be too dissatisfied with your work.

Whoever lives sincerely and encounters much trouble and disappointment without being bowed down is worth more than one who has always sailed before the wind and has only known prosperity.

Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me.

It astonishes me already when I compare my condition today with what it was a month ago. Before that I knew well enough one could fracture one's legs and arms and recover afterward, but I did not know that you could fracture the brain in your head and recover from that too.

One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul, and yet no one ever comes to sit by it.

I feel a certain calm. There is safety in the midst of danger. What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?