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

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?

Believe that time is going to help you do what you want.

Painting is the only universal language. All nature is creation's picture book. Painting alone can describe every thing which can be seen, and suggest every emotion which can be felt. Art reaches back into the babyhood of time, and is man's only lasting monument.

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!

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.

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!