"This painting, this work you miss so much is a cause of much trouble and concern, you know this as well as I do and yet, child that you are, you are already weeping for the loss of the very thing that darkened you mood only recently. Think of it, yours is not the very worst lot: you have a real affection, a devoted heart that is yours an yours alone, do not be ungrateful for the dealings of fate, think of the great sorrow that is solitude; whatever anyone says or does, womankind has immense need of affection; to want to retreat into yourself is to attempt the impossible."

“Music and painting should never be literary, a very subtle distinction according to Renoir. As soon as I try to represent an individual, their physiognomy and attitudes, I become a literary artist.”

“He is a subtle and brilliant draughtsman.. ..all these preliminary drawings would astonish the public who obviously imagine the 'Impressionists' work at tremendous speed. I don't believe one can go further than this in the study of form in a drawing. I am charmed by his 'Nude Bathers' quite as much as those by Ingres. He tells me that he thinks the nude is absolutely indispensable as an art form.”

“I do not think any man would ever treat a woman as his equal, and it is all I ask because I know my worth.”

“Your phrase: 'I am working hard at growing old', is absolutely me. What if you were always to speak in my place..”

“I say, 'I should like to die', but that's not true at all, I should like to get younger.. ..youth and old age are similar in more ways than one, and they are the two moments in life when one can feel one's own soul which would be a proof that it exists.”

“The tall fellow Bazille has done something I find quite fine: a young girl in a very light dress in the shadow of a tree beyond which one sees a town. There is a good deal of light, sunlight, He is trying to do what we have so often tried to bring off: to paint a figure in the open air. This time I think he has succeed.”