“Impressionism is only direct sensation. All great painters were less or more impressionists. It is mainly a question of instinct, and much simpler than [John Singer] Sargent thinks.”

Most people think I paint fast. I paint very slowly.

Apart from painting and gardening, I’m not good at anything.

I’m continuing to work hard, not without periods of discouragement, but my strength comes back again.

My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece

I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

I never draw except with brush and paint.

The effect of sincerity is to give one’s work the character of a protest. The painter, being concerned only with conveying his impression, simply seeks to be himself and no one else.

It’s the hardest thing to be alone in being satisfied with what one’s done.

The more I live, the more I regret how little i know.

One’s better off alone, and yet there are so many things that are impossible to fathom on one’s own. In fact it’s a terrible business and the task is a hard one.

If only the weather would improve, there’d be hope of some work, but every day brings rain.

All I did was to look at what the universe showed me, to let my brush bear witness to it.

Gardening was something I learned in my youth when I was unhappy. I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

It is only too easy to catch people’s attention by doing something worse than anyone else has dared to do it before.

Never, even as a child, would I bend to a rule.

It’s on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.

I can imagine no greater misfortune for a cultured people than to see in the hands of the rulers not only the civil, but also the religious power.

To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.

I am not blaming those who are resolved to rule, only those who show an even greater readiness to submit.

Failure is the true test of greatness

Some of the greatest moments in life come from moments that are incomplete.

Greatness is a spiritual condition.

I do not believe today everything I believed yesterday I wonder will I believe tomorrow everything I believe today.

I think God rarely gives to one man, or one set of men, more than one great moral victory to win.