1822
"There is in me something that is often stronger than my body, which is often enlivened by it. In some people the inner spark scarcely exists. Without it, I should die, but it will consume me (doubtless I speak of imagination, which masters and leads me)." p. 41
1824
"I can see that my turbulent mind needs agitation, needs to free itself, to try a hundred different things before reaching the goal whose tyrannous call everywhere torments me. There is an old leaven, a black depth that demands satisfaction. If I am not quivering like a snake in the hands of a Pythoness, I am cold..." p. 86
1832 notes fighting horses in Tangier
1847
"Whence comes the impression which the sight of all that produced on me? From the fact that I got out of my everyday ideas which are my whole world, that I got out of my street which is my universe. How necessary it is to give oneself a shaking up, to get one's head out, to try to read in the book of creation, which has nothing in common with our cities and with the works of men! Certainly, seeing such things renders one better and calmer." p. 130
1847
The middle ages compared to the 19th century: "Action [then] was directed solely to elevating the soul above matter. In our age, just the reverse is the case .... material happiness is the only one for the modern." p. 167
1849
"...art is no longer what the vulgar think it to be, that is, some sort of inspiration which comes from nowhere, which proceeds by chance, and presents no more than the picturesque externals of things. It is reason itself, adorned by genius, but following a necessary course and encompassed by higher laws." pp. 194-195
1850
"On man's gifts of reflection and imagination. Fatal gifts. It is evident that nature cares very little whether man has a mind or not. The real man is the savage; he is in accord with nature as she is." p. 219
"...painting, that is to say the material thing called painting [is] no more than the pretext, than the bridge between the mind of the painter and that of the spectator." p. 234
1853
"The type of emotion peculiar to painting is, so to speak, tangible; poetry and music cannot give it. You enjoy the actual representation of objects as if you really saw them, and at the same time the meaning which the images have for the mind warms you and transports you. These figures, these objects, which seem the thing itself to a certain part of your intelligent being are like a solid bridge on which imagination supports itself to penetrate to the mysterious and profound sensation for which the forms are, so to speak, the hieroglyph..."