"I could look at Poussin's pictures forever and ever and always learn something."
"I could look at Poussin's pictures forever and ever and always learn something."
" Sometimes, in places where the land is sterile, you see figures hoeing and digging. From time to time one raises himself an straightens his back, …wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘Thou shalt eat thy bread in the sweat of thy brow.’ Is this the gay, jovial work some people would have us believe in? But nevertheless, to me it is true humanity and great poetry. "
"It is never the cheerful side of things that appears to me"
"As I have never seen anything but fields since I was born, I try to say as best I can what I saw and felt when I was at work."
"To tell the truth, the peasant subjects suit my temperament best; for I must confess, even if you think me a socialist, that the human side of art is what touches me most"
"I attempt to make things look not as if they have been brought together by chance, but as if there were a necessity bonding them together."
"One must be able to use the trivial to express the sublime-that is true power!"
"Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow."
