J. M. W. Turner Quotes

My job is to paint what I see, not what I know.

It is only when we are no longer fearful that we begin to create.

Light is therefore color.

I have no secret but hard work. This is a secret that many never learn, and they don't succeed because they don't learn it. Labor is the genius that changes the world from ugliness to beauty, and the great curse to a great blessing.

I don't paint so that people will understand me, I paint to show what a particular scene looks like.

I know of no genius but the genius of hard work.

If I could find anything blacker than black, I'd use it.

It is necessary to mark the greater from the lesser truth: namely the larger and more liberal idea of nature from the comparatively narrow and confined; namely that which addresses itself to the imagination from that which is solely addressed to the eye.

Indistinctness is my forte.

To select, combine and concentrate that which is beautiful in nature and admirable in art is as much the business of the landscape painter in his line as in the other departments of art.

There's a sketch at every turn.

I hate married men. They never make any sacrifices to the arts, but are always thinking of their duties to their wives and families or some rubbish of that sort.

Painting is a strange business.

Painting can never show her nose in company with architecture but to have it snubbed.