The vivacity and brightness of colors in a landscape will never bear any comparison with a landscape in nature when it is illumined by the sun, unless the painting is placed in such a position that it will receive the same light from the sun as does the landscape.

Do not imitate one another's style. If you do, so far as your art is concerned you will be called a grandson, rather than the son of Nature. It is always best to have recourse to nature, which is replete with such abundance of objects, than to the productions of other masters, who learnt everything from her.

O mighty and once living instrument of formative nature. Incapable of availing thyself of thy vast strength thou hast to abandon a life of stillness and to obey the law which God and time gave to procreative nature.

There is no result in nature without a cause; understand the cause and you will have no need of the experiment.

Painting embraces and contains within itself all the things which nature produces or which results from the fortuitous actions of men... he is but a poor master who makes only a single figure well.

The body of the earth is of the nature of a fish, a grampus or sperm whale, because it draws water as its breath instead of air.