I have never seen an angel. Show me an angel, and I'll paint one.

Fine art is knowledge made visible.

I have never seen either angels or goddesses, so I am not interested in painting them.

Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it.

Painting is the representation of visible forms. The essence of realism is its negation of the ideal.

The principle of realism means denial of the ideal.

Beauty lies in nature and reveals, once the artist has perceived it, its own expressive power.

To be able to translate the customs, ideas and appearance of my times as I see them - in a word, to create a living art - this has been my aim.

When I am no longer controversial, I will no longer be important

Titles have never given a just idea of things; were it otherwise, the work would be superfluous.

The beautiful is in nature, and it is encountered under the most diverse forms of reality. Once it is found it belongs to art, or rather to the artist who discovers it.

God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right, even though I think it is hopeless.

Coraline shivered. She preferred her other mother to have a location: if she were nowhere, then she could be anywhere. And, after all, it is always easier to be afraid of something you cannot see.

The final result of political action often, no regularly, stands in completely inadequate and often even paradoxical relation to its original meaning.

Real limitations can be reasonably challenged and expanded, but a hobbled mind is not going anywhere.

Rarely do you regret what you have done nearly as much as what you have failed to do.

Being grounded in your lifelong culture and your personal perspective, you are comfortable with the way you see things and may believe it is the best and only way.

Many [Western Christians] habitually think and act as if there is no eternity. . . . We major in the momentary and minor in the momentous.

Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.

If you're proactive, you don't have to wait for circumstances or other people to create perspective expanding experiences. You can consciously create your own.

The conductor is a peculiar person. He turns his back on his friends in the audience, shakes a stick at his players in the orchestra, and then wonders why nobody loves him.