Children are born with their own optimism. They have a clarity and a simplicity that we can only wish for.
Countless as the sands of the sea are human passions.
Do we ever get what we really want? Do we ever achieve what our powers have ostensibly equipped us for? No: everything works by contraries.
The Lord grant we may all be tillers of the soil.
It is well-known that there are many faces in the world over the finishing of which nature did not take much trouble, did not employ any fine tools such as files, gimlets, and so on, but simply hacked them out with round strokes: one chop-a nose appears; another chop-lips appear; eyes are scooped out with a big drill; and she lets it go into the world rough-hewn, saing: "ALIVE!
As it is so strangely ordained in this world, what is amusing will turn into being gloomy, if you stand too long before it, and then God knows what ideas may not stray into the mind. . . Why is it that even in moments of unthinking, careless gaiety a different and strange mood comes upon one?
Don't blame the mirror if your face is faulty.
What you have to do is disavow yourself from any sense other than ascendancy. That's the only direction you could possibly have towards painting. There's no other direction at all. There's no other space in art. There's no other way in which you can find yourself except in somehow feeling it. And by holding to this feeling you can once again reach out and guess and miss - and sometimes hit.
I don't find myself that interesting as a human being, so I don't really think that much of what I say or do warrants being recorded.
The Renaissance is studded by the names of the artists and architects, with their creations recorded as great historical events.
We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.