William Merritt Chase Quotations

Association with my pupils has kept me young in my work. Criticism of their work has kept my own point of view clear.

I don't believe in making pencil sketches and then painting landscape in your studio. You must be right under the sky.

You must try to match your colors as nearly as you can to those you see before you, and you must study the effects of light and shade on natures own hues and tints.

Life is very short... but I would like to live four times and if I could, I would set out to do no other things than I am seeking now to do.

Design is everything.

It takes two to paint. One to paint, the other to stand by with an axe to kill him before he spoils it.

I am not sure that it is a bad thing to go to a school, as I did, where the boys threw things at me, and asked if there was nothing else I could do [but draw].

My God, I'd rather go to Europe than go to heaven.

Don't try to make comparisons between your own pictures. Forget what you have done and think only of making the best of what you are doing.

Combine a certain amount of indifference with your ambition. Be carefully careless. If you don't succeed today, there is always tomorrow.

Do not imagine that I would disregard that thing that lies beneath the mask... but be sure that when the outside is rightly seen, the thing that lies under the surface will be found upon your canvas.

Do not try to paint the grandiose thing. Paint the commonplace so that it will be distinguished.

Diversity...is not casual liberal tolerance of anything not yourself. It is not polite accommodation. Instead, diversity is, in action, the sometimes painful awareness that other people, other races, other voices, other habits of mind have as much integrity of being, as much claim on the world as you do... And I urge you, amid all the differences present to the eye and mind, to reach out to create the bond that...will protect us all. We are all meant to be here together.