Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass. ~Fran Lebowitz

Art holds fast when all else is lost. ~German Proverb

But that's what being an artist is feeling crummy before everyone else feels crummy. ~The New Yorker

Anyone who says you can't see a thought simply doesn't know art. ~Wynetka Ann Reynolds

Pictures must not be too picturesque. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work. ~Henry Moore

Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

All art requires courage.

The artist's world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep.

Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail.

To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.

Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.

An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.

The artist uses the talent he has, wishing he had more talent. The talent uses the artist it has, wishing it had more artist.

I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things.

To send light into the darkness of men's hearts such is the duty of the artist.

Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.

It has been said that art is a tryst, for in the joy of it maker and beholder meet.

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.

Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one. Painting is silent poetry.

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.

Perfection in art, as often in life, is better captured by eraser than pencil.

Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I'll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I'll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can.

I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beechtree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines

Never a day passes but that I do myself the honor to commune with some of nature's varied forms.

I want to realize brotherhood or identity not merely with the beings called human, but I want to realize identity with all life, even with such beings as crawl on earth.

All through the long winter, I dream of my garden. On the first day of spring, I dig my fingers deep into the soft earth. I can feel its energy, and my spirits soar.

My spirit was lifted and my soul nourished by my time in the garden. It gave me a calm connection with all of life, and an awareness that remains with me now, long after leaving the garden.

I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green.

To cultivate a garden is. . . to go hand in hand with Nature in some of her most beautiful processes...

The garden is where you take the time in your life to tune in and listen. It just takes being still long enough, opening your heart, opening your spirit up to what the plants have to tell you.

Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons. It is to grow in the open air, and to eat and sleep with the earth

Only as a child's awareness and reverence for the wholeness of life are developed can his humanity to his own kind reach its full development.

If you wish your children to think deep thoughts, to know the holiest emotions, take them to the woods and hills, and give them the freedom of the meadows; the hills purify those who walk upon them.

Must we always teach our children with books? Let them look at the stars and the mountains above. Let them look at the waters and the trees and flowers on Earth. Then they will begin to think, and to think is the beginning of a real education.

As a child, one has that magical capacity to move among the many eras of the earth; to see the land as an animal does; to experience the sky from the perspective of a flower or a bee; to feel the earth quiver and breathe beneath us; to know a hundred different smells of mud and listen unselfconsciously to the soughing of the trees.

Every child is born a naturalist. His eyes are, by nature, open to the glories of the stars, the beauty of the flowers, and the mystery of life.

Teaching Children Through Nature

One should pay attention to even the smallest crawling creature for these too may have a valuable lesson to teach us.

You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns.

To look at any thing, If you would know that thing, You must look at it long...

Look! Look! Look deep into nature and you will understand everything.

The whole secret of the study of nature lies in learning how to use one's eyes...

Come forth into the light of things, let Nature be your teacher.

There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness. This mysterious unity and integrity is wisdom, the mother of us all, natura naturans. There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a fountain of action and joy. It rises up in wordless gentleness, and flows out to me from the unseen roots of all created being.

If there is any wisdom running through my life now, in my walking on this earth, it came from listening in the Great Silence to the stones, trees, space, the wild animals, to the pulse of all life as my heartbeat.

Whenever I have found myself stuck in the ways I relate to things, I return to nature. It is my principal teacher, and I try to open my whole being to what it has to say.

Believe one who knows: you will find something greater in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters.

Nature is man's teacher. She unfolds her treasure to his search, unseals his eye, illumes his mind, and purifies his heart; an influence breathes from all the sights and sounds of her existence.

Away from the tumult of motor and mill I want to be care-free; I want to be still! I'm weary of doing things; weary of words I want to be one with the blossoms and birds.

The forest makes your heart gentle. You become one with it... No place for greed or anger there.

It was in the forest that I found the peace that passeth understanding

In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, - no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair.

Only spread a fern-frond over a man's head and worldly cares are cast out, and freedom and beauty and peace come in.

And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.