Art happens -- no hovel is safe from it, no Prince may depend upon it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about."

"To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano."

"If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this."

"To say of a picture, as is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labour, is to say that it is incomplete and unfit for view."

"You shouldn't say it is not good. You should say you do not like it; and then, you know, you're perfectly safe."