What is art? Nature concentrated....

Children, dear and loving children, can alone console a woman for the loss of her beauty.

One should believe in marriage as in the immortality of the soul.

If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye.

Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.

My age and health will never allow me to realize the dream of art I've been pursuing all my life.

The hours I spend with you I look upon as sort of a perfumed garden, a dim twilight, and a fountain singing to it. You and you alone make me feel that I am alive. Other men it is said have seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough.

An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.

He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.

The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years, But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the wars of elements, The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.

To be happy, we must be true to nature and carry our age along with us.