The mind of a painter should be like a mirror which is filled with as many images as there are things placed before him.
No one should ever imitate the style of another because, with regard to art, he will be called a nephew and not a child of nature.
O painter, take care lest the greed for gain prove a stronger incentive than renown in art, for to gain this renown is a far greater thing than is the renown of riches.
O admirable necessity! O powerful action! What mind can penetrate your nature? What language can express this marvel? None, to be sure. This is where human discourse turns toward the contemplation of the divine.
A gray day provides the best light.
The vivacity and brightness of colors in a landscape will never bear any comparison with a landscape in nature when it is illumined by the sun, unless the painting is placed in such a position that it will receive the same light from the sun as does the landscape.
We know well that mistakes are more easily detected in the works of others than in one’s own.
Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.
Do not imitate one another’s style. If you do, so far as your art is concerned you will be called a grandson, rather than the son of Nature.
Perspective is to painting what the bridle is to the horse, the rudder to a ship.
I would venture to affirm that a man cannot attain excellence if he satisfy the ignorant and not those of his own craft, and if he be not ‘singular’ or ‘distant,’ or whatever you like to call him.
Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.
The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.
That which can be lost cannot be deemed riches.
Those who become enamoured of the art, without having previously applied to the diligent study of the scientific part of it, may be compared to mariners who put to the sea in a ship without rudder or compass and therefore cannot be certain of arriving at the wished for port.
Truth was always but the daughter of time.
Tears come from the heart and not from the brain.
It is no small benefit on finding oneself in bed in the dark to go over again in the imagination the main lines of the forms previously studied, or other noteworthy things conceived by ingenious speculation.
A bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law, which instrument it is within the capacity of man to reproduce with all its movements.
Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.