"The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining on shore."

"If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced."

"It often seems to me that the night is much more alive and richly coloured than the day."

"Believe me that sometimes I laugh heartily because people suspect me of all kinds of malignity and absurdity, of which not a hair of my head is guilty — I, who am really no one but a friend of nature,…"

"One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way."