Those who are in love with practice without knowledge are like the sailor who gets into a ship without rudder or compass and who never can be certain whether he is going
– I say that when you paint you should have a flat mirror and often look at your work as reflected in it, when you will see it reversed, and it will appear to you like some other painter’s work, so you will be better able to judge of its faults
Therefore you must know, O Painter! that you cannot be a good one if you are not the universal master of representing by your art every kind of form produced by nature.
All other company may be highly mischievous.
And if you must have companionship find it in your studio.
tell you, you will not be able to help often listening to their chatter.
better to study the forms of natural objects
Let no man who is not a Mathematician read the elements of my work
The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies everything placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence.
Of Bees: They live together in communities, they are destroyed that we may take the honey from them. Many and very great nations will be destroyed in their own dwellings