Those who have the will to create do not care to use old phrases.

love the tools made for mechanics. I stop at the windows of hardware stores. If I could only find an excuse to buy many more of them than I have already bought on the mere pretense that I might have use for them! They are so beautiful, so simple and plain and straight to their meaning. There is no “Art” about them, they have not been made

He who has contemplated has met with himself, is in a state to see into the realities beyond the surfaces of his subject. Nature reveals to him, and, seeing and feeling intensely, he paints, and whether he wills it or not each brush stroke is an exact record of such as he was at the exact moment the stroke was made. —

No knowledge is so easily found as when it is needed.

It is not desirable to devote all your time to an appreciation of art. Art should drive you forth. It should be an incentive to life. The greatest value of art to the appreciator is in that it stimulates to personal activity.

There is no end to the study of technique. Yet more important than the lifelong study of technique is the lifelong self-education. In fact, technique can only be used properly by those who have definite purpose in what they do, and it is only they who invent technique. Otherwise it is the work of parrots.

the only education that counts is self-education.

Let a student enter the school with this advice: No matter how good the school is, his education is in his own hands. All education must be self-education.

A genius is one who can see. The others can often “draw” remarkably well. Their kind of drawing, however, is not very difficult. They can change about. They can make their sight fit the easiest way for their drawing. As their seeing is not particular it does not matter. With the seer it is different. Nothing will do but the most precise statement.