John Constable

“It will be difficult to name a class of landscape in which the sky is not the key note, the standard of scale, and the chief organ of sentiment.”

“The sky is the source of light in nature, and governs everything.”

“We see nothing till we understand it.”

“The great vice of the present day is bravura, an attempt to do something beyond the truth.”

“My limited and abstracted art is to be found under every hedge, and in every lane, and therefore nobody thinks it worth picking up.”

“Painting is but another word for feeling.”

“I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.”

“I should paint my own places best.”

“The world is wide; no two days are alike, nor even two hours; neither were there ever two leaves of a tree alike since the creation of the world; and the genuine productions of art, like those of nature, are all distinct from each other.”

“The sound of water escaping from mill-dams, etc., willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brickwork, I love such things.”