Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.

— Bacon, Francis

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

— Balzac, Honore De

Good painters imitate nature, bad ones spew it up.

— Cervantes, Miguel De

A good painter is to paint two main things, men and the working of man's mind.

— Da Vinci, Leonardo

I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.

— Dali, Salvador

Painting does not come from intelligence so much, as from sight and feeling and invention.

— Hamerton

Sunlight is painting.

— Hawthorne, Nathaniel

Drawing is speaking to the eye; talking is painting to the ear.

— Joubert, Joseph

I paint things as they are. I don't comment. I record.

— Lautrec, Henri De Toulouse

The best portraits are those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature.

— Macaulay, Thomas B.

What a strange vanity painting is; it attracts admiration by resembling the original, we do not admire.

— Pascal, Blaise

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

— Picasso, Pablo

I paint objects as I think them not as I see them.

— Picasso, Pablo

I've been forty years discovering that the queen of all colors is black.

— Renoir, Pierre Auguste

Painting is a way to forget life. It is a cry in the night, a strangled laugh.

— Rouault, Georges

In old times men used their powers of painting to show the objects of faith, in later times they use the objects of faith to show their powers of painting.

— Ruskin, John

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

— Sargent, John Singer

Painting is silent poetry and poetry spoken, painting.

— Simonides

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

— Van Gogh, Vincent

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

— Van Gogh, Vincent

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

— Wilde, Oscar