"Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model."

"We feel lonely now and then and long for friends and think we should be quite different and happier if we found a friend of whom we might say: "He is the one. But you, too, will begin to learn that there is much self-deception behind this longing; if we yielded too much to it, it would lead us from the road."

"There is safety in the very heart of danger."

"Let me stop there, but my God, how beautiful Shakespeare is, who else is as mysterious as he is; his language and method are like a brush trembling with excitement and ecstasy. But one must learn to read, just as one must learn to see and learn to live."

"I confess I do not know why, but looking at the stars always makes me dream."

"But are not this struggle and even the mistakes one may make better and do they not develop us more than if we kept systematically away from emotions?"

"Conscience is a man's compass."

"I hope to depart in no other way than looking back with love and wistfulness and thinking, oh paintings that I would have made.."

"I thought I would be understood without words."

"I dream of painting and then I paint my dream."

"If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced."

"So what do you want? Does what happens inside show on the outside? There is such a great fire in one's soul, and yet nobody ever comes to warm themselves there, and passersby see nothing but a little smoke coming from the top of the chimney, and go on their way."

"The world concerns me only in so far as I owe it a certain debt and duty, so to speak, because I have walked this earth for 30 years, and out of gratitude would like to leave some memento in the form of drawings and paintings-not made to please this school or that, but to express a genuine human feeling."

"One must work and dare if one really wants to live."

"Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well."

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart."

"Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination do not become the slave of your model."

"A good picture is equivalent to a good deed."

"Don't lose heart if it's very difficult at times, everything will come out all right and nobody can in the beginning do as he wishes."

"What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?"

"One of the most beautiful things to do is to paint darkness, which nevertheless has light in it."

"My great longing is to learn to make those very incorrectnesses, those deviations, remodellings, changes of reality, so that they may become, yes, untruth if you like - but more true than the literal truth."

"If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?"

"It has always been so much my desire to paint for those who don't know the artistic side of a painting."

"I feel the need of relations and friendship of affection of friendly intercourse. ... I cannot miss these things without feeling as does any other intelligent man a void and a deep need."

"But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things."

"I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream."

"I dream of painting and then I paint my dream."

"Well, right now it seems that things are going very badly for me, have been doing so for some considerable time, and may continue to do so well into the future. But it is possible that everything will get better after it has all seemed to go wrong. I am not counting on it, it may never happen, but if there should be a change for the better I should regard that as a gain, I should rejoice, I should say, at last! So there was something after all!"

"I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people."

"It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done."

"I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate."

"There is peace even in the storm."

"The way to know life is to love many things."

"Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again."

"In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism, skepticism and humbug, and we shall want to live more musically."

"And when I read, and really I do not read so much, only a few authors, - a few men that I discovered by accident - I do this because they look at things in a broader, milder and more affectionate way than I do, and because they know life better, so that I can learn from them."

"The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore."

"One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way."

"Great things are not something accidental but must certainly be willed."

"I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create."

"When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out and paint the stars."

"Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together."

"Painting is a faith and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion."

"What is drawing? How does one learn it? It is working through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do."

"It always strikes me, and it is very peculiar, that, whenever we see the image of indescribable and unutterable desolation-of loneliness, poverty, and misery, the end and extreme of things-the thought of God comes into one's mind."

"It is better to be high-spirited even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent."

"When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out and paint the stars."

"It's better to have a gay life of it than to commit suicide."

"Art is to console those who are broken by life."