Curiously Enough, The Sublime Is Generally Achieved

The So-called Conscientiousness Of The Majority Of Painters Is Only Perfection Applied To The Art Of Boring.

The Living Model Never Answers Well The Idea Or Impressions The Painter Wishes To Express; One Must, Therefore, Learn To Do Without One, And For That, You Must Acquire Facility, Furnish One's Memory To The Point Of Infinitude, And Make Numerous Drawings After The Old Masters.

Commonplace People Have An Answer For Everything And Nothing Ever Surprises Them. They Try To Look As Though They Knew What You Were About To Say Better Than You Did Yourself, And When It Is Their Turn To Speak, They Repeat With Great Assurance Something That They Have Heard Other People Say, As Though It Were Their Own Invention.

Seeing Artistically Does Not Happen Automatically. We Must Constantly Develop Our Powers Of Observation.

The True Wisdom Of The Philosopher Ought To Insist In Enjoying Everything. Yet We Apply Ourselves To Dissecting And Destroying Everything That Is Good In Itself, That Has Virtue, Albeit The Virtue There Is In Mere Illusions. Nature Gives Us This Life Like A Toy To A Weak Child. We Want To See How It All Works; We Break Everything. There Remains In Our Hands, And Before Our Eyes, Stupid And Opened Too Late, The Sterile Wreckage, Fragments That Will Not Again Make A Whole. The Good Is So Simple.