It's as interesting and as difficult to say a thing well as to paint it. There is the art of lines and colours, but the art of words exists too, and will never be less important.

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 am always doing what I can't do yet in order to learn how to do it.

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.

Both she and I have grief enough and trouble enough, but as for regrets – neither of us have any.

It seems to me it's a painter's duty to try to put an idea into his work.

The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others.