Watercolour is not especially difficult, but I must warn you to steer clear of those pretty English watercolourists, so skilful and alas so weak, and so often too truthful.

Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.

Everything is beautiful, all that matters is to be able to interpret.

All the sorrow, all the bitterness, all the sadness, I forget them and ignore them in the joy of working.

God takes care of imbeciles, little children and artists.

When you do a thing with your whole soul and everything that is noble within you, you always find your counterpart.

It is absurd to look for perfection.

I think when one has talent one finally breaks through; so don't pass up any opportunity to do some work.

It is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly, that one fine day you discover to your surprise that you have rendered something in its true character.

At fifty, that is in 1880, I formulated the idea of unity, without being able to render it. At sixty, I am beginning to see the possibility of rendering it.

I regard it as a waste of time to think only of selling: one forgets one's art and exaggerates one's value.

Anxiety's like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you very far.

Each nation feels superior to other nations. That breeds patriotism - and wars.

Farewell to Thee! But not farewell To all my fondest thoughts of Thee; Within my heart they still shall dwell And they shall cheer and comfort me.

That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved.

A moderately honest man with a moderately faithful wife, moderate drinkers both, in a moderately healthy house: that is the true middle class unit.

The wars of the twenty-first century will be fought over water.

If you don't run your own life, somebody else will.

nerve, not talent, is the one necessary and sufficient trait for success. (Wouldn't it be ideal if it were talent? But talent with no nerve is like the sound of one hand clapping.

Self-pity is an ignoble emotion, but we all feel it, and the orthodox critical line that it represents some kind of artistic flaw is dubious, a form of emotional correctness.

The cutting of heads is become so much a la mode, that one is apt to feel of a morning whether their own is on their shoulders.