It's impossible to make a picture without values. Values are the basis. If they are not, tell me what is the basis.

The mission of art is to represent nature not to imitate her.

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.

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.

What is nobler than a man wresting and wringing his bread from the stubborn soil by the sweat of his brow and the break of his back for his wife and children!

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!

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.