“The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands.”

“The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard.”

“How may paintings have preserved the image of a divine beauty which in its natural manifestation has been rapidly overtaken by time or death. Thus, the work of the painter is nobler than that of nature, its mistress.”

“A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.”

“And you who wish to represent by words the form of man and all the aspects of his membrification, relinquish that idea. For the more minutely you describe the more you will confine the mind of the reader, and the more you will keep him from the knowledge of the thing described. And so it is necessary to draw and to describe.”

“Learning never exhausts the mind.”

“Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.”