“A great spirit has been amongst us, and a great artist is gone.”

“The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation.”

“My pawing over the ancients and semi-ancients has been one struggle to find out what has been done, once and for all, better than it can ever be done again, and to find out what remains for us to do, and plenty does remain, for if we still feel the same emotions as those who launched a thousand ships, it is quite certain that we came on these feelings differently, through different nuances, by different intellectual gradations. Each age has its own abounding gifts yet only some ages transmute them into matters of duration.”

“Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.”

“The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth.”

“The serious artist must be as open as nature. Nature does not give all of herself in a paragraph. She is rugged and not set apart into discreet categories.”

“A nation which neglects the perceptions of its artists declines. After a while it ceases to act, and merely survives.There is probably no use in telling this to people who can't see it without being told.”