"Believe me that sometimes I laugh heartily because people suspect me of all kinds of malignity and absurdity, of which not a hair of my head is guilty — I, who am really no one but a friend of nature,…"

"Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion."

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — ass…"

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart."

"At present this horror of life is already less pronounced, and the melancholy less acute. But I still have no will, and hardly any desires, or none at all that are to do with ordinary life."