Marsden Hartley Quotes

It is never difficult to see images – when the principle of the image is embedded in the soul.

By getting as close to the true idea of religion, of spirituality as it is possible for us to get.. ...we would be in possession of the only tangible relationship tot the deity in things.

My work has the abstraction underneath it all now & what I deliberately set out to do down here, for this is the perfect realistic abstraction in landscape.

A reaction, to be pleasant, must be simple.

The virtue of Yankee upbringing spiritually speaking is of more downright value to me than any past heritages.

(I was) happily contended to be climbing the heights and the clouds by the brush method.. ...rendering the God-spirit in the mountains.

I harp always on the 'idea' of life as I dwell perpetually on the existence of the moment.

I could never be French, I could never become German - I shall always remain American - the essence which is in me is American mysticism just as Davies declared it when he saw those first landscapes.

I don't want to escape via intellectual ruses – I want affirmations via passionate embraces & you can't have life unless you live it.

The reading of tourist prospectuses is one of the joys of the world -- it is like operetta in prose -- all so flowery and heavenlike.