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.

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!

Nature is economical. She puts her lights and darks only where she needs them.

You can't do a fine thing without having seen fine examples.

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.

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.

Let me give you a few simple rules for learning to draw. First, see of what shape the whole thing is. Next, put in the line that marks the movement of the whole. Don't have more than one movement in a figure; you can't patch parts together. Simple lines; then simple values. Establish the fact of the whole. Is it square, oblong, cube, or what is it?