“Ah!” said a brave painter to me, thinking on these things, “if a man has failed, you will find he has dreamed instead of working. There is no way to success in our art, but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day.”

The true artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes.

A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree; or draw a child by studying the outlines of its form merely, but by watching for a time his motions and plays, the painter enters into his nature and can then draw him at every attitude.

The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.

Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art.

Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.

In art the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can inspire.

The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine.

Every artist was first an amateur.

Art is a jealous mistress, and, if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or philosophy, he makes a bad husband, and an ill provider, and should be wise in season, and not fetter himself with duties which will embitter his days, and spoil him for his proper work.