I don't like persuaded sitters. I never could paint a cat if the cat had any scruples, religious, superstitious, or otherwise, about sitting.

There is force and vitality in a first sketch from life which the after-work rarely has. You want a picture to seize you as forcibly as if a man had seized you by the shoulder! It should impress you like reality!

There's lots of fun in this world, after all. And if there isn't, there is in the next. And we're going there, sure.

When an artist leaves his work to amuse people, he loses his time and their respect. If people are to be amused by artists, it must be by employing them in their legitimate occupation.

The artist is an interpreter of Nature. People learn to love Nature through pictures. To the artist, nothing is in vain; nothing beneath his notice. If he is great enough, he will exalt every subject which he treats.

You can always draw as well as you know how to. I flatter myself that I feel more than I express on canvas; but I know that is not so.

Beauty is that little something that fills the whole world, and is contained neither in a single straight nose, a long eyelash, nor a blue mountain. Some see it in a leg of mutton, others in a compound fracture; and to expect others to accept one's own definition of it is as absurd as to expect all humanity to use the same toilet-brush.