An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.

To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano

It takes a long time for a man to look like his portrait.

An artist’s career always begins tomorrow.

Art happens no hovel is safe from it, no Prince may depend upon it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about, and puny efforts to make it universal end in quaint comedy, and coarse farce

I maintain that two and two would continue to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five.

Work alone will efface the footsteps of work

An artist’s career always begins tomorrow

Had silicon been a gas, I would have been a major general

It would have been called provincial and barbarous; it would have been cited as an incident of low civilization to confuse such art.

If other people are going to talk, conversation becomes impossible

You shouldn’t say it is not good. You should say, you do not like it; and then, you know, you’re perfectly safe.

The rare few, who, early in life have rid themselves of the friendship of the many

I can’t tell you if genius is hereditary, because heaven has granted me no offspring.

I am not arguing with you – I am telling you

The vast majority of English folk cannot and will not consider a picture as a picture, apart from any story which it may be supposed to tell