Voices of the Muses

“It seems to me that a painter has a duty to try to put an idea into his work.”

“[I]’d almost believe that these canvases will tell you what I can’t say in words, what I consider healthy and fortifying about the countryside.”

“One is also less alone then, because one thinks: I may be here on my own, but while I’m here holding my tongue my work may be speaking to my friend, and whoever sees it won’t suspect me of being cold-hearted.”

“But doing something endures — and one doesn’t easily regret having done something. The more active the better, and I’d rather fail than sit idle.”

“One knows what one has to do; there’s an abundance of subjects and Carlyle rightly says, Blessed is he who has found his work.”

“Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment.”

“I feel so strongly that the story of people is like the story of wheat, if one isn’t sown in the earth to germinate there, what does it matter, one is milled in order to become bread.”

“I’m always inclined to believe that the best way of knowing God is to love a great deal. Love that friend, that person, that thing, whatever you like, you’ll be on the right path to knowing more thoroughly, afterwards; that’s what I say to myself. But you must love with a high, serious intimate sympathy, with a will, with intelligence, and you must always seek to know more thoroughly, better, and more.”

“Life if well spent, is long.”

“[M]y own conscience is the compass that shows me the way, although I know that it doesn’t work exactly accurately.”

“Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney and then go on their way.”

“In short, I want to reach the point where people say of my work, that man feels deeply and that man feels subtly.”