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

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.

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

By God! I will not tell you more to-day,Judge any way you will -- what matters it?

Beauty is that little something that fills the whole world, and is contained neither in a single straight nose, a long eyelash, nor a blue mountain. Some see it in a leg of mutton, others in a compound fracture; and to expect others to accept one's own definition of it is as absurd as to expect all humanity to use the same toilet-brush.

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.