It is a pity that, as one gradually gains experience, one loses one's youth.

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.

As a painter I shall never signify anything of importance. I feel it Absolutely.

The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech.

Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.

But what's your ultimate goal, you'll say. That goal will become clearer, will take shape slowly and surely, as the croquis becomes a sketch and the sketch a painting, as one works more seriously, as one digs deeper into the originally vague idea, the first fugitive, passing thought, unless it becomes firm.

Everyone who works with love and with intelligence finds in the very sincerity of his love for nature and art a kind of armor against the opinions of other people.