"Do you see all those beautiful trees there ? I sketched them all thirty years ago; I have had all their portraits. Look at that beech there, the sun lights it up and makes of it a marble column, a column that has muscles, limbs, hands and a fair skin, white and pallid.. .See the modest green of the heath and its plants, rosy, amaranthine, which distil honey for the bees and fragrance for the butterflies. The sun lights them up and gives them a diapason of extraordinary color. Ah, the sun.."

“What has art to do with those things ? Art will never come except from some little disregarded corner where some isolated man is studying the mysteries of nature, fully assured that the answer which he finds and which is good for him is good also for humanity, whatever may be the number of succeeding generations.”

“biography-text of Th. Roussseau in 'The painters of Barbizon : Millet, Rousseau, Diaz', by John, W. Mollett, 1890”

“I thought only of one thing, to account to myself for the laws of light and perspective. I did not attach any importance to what they found original, new and romantic in me, I sought the picture.”

“Sir - Be good enough to allow me to address to you a rather important request with regard to a picture inscribed at the Ministry as ,_1837-42.jpg 'The Avenue' which at one time you kindly ordered from me. This picture.. ..makes me tremble in this exceptional case at the official destiny of my work. I should wish, as well as for another I am now finishing, to be able to give myself in public the advantage of a composition still more developed, and lending itself more to general acceptation. With the help of your goodness and your clear discernment everything will be arranged for the best, as has offered me a place for ,_1837-42.jpg 'The Avenue' in his gallery, and I would arrange with you to occupy myself with a picture, the same in substance, but with a further development. If you think you can accept my proposition, as I hope you will, you will render me a great service, as well as to, who honours me by anxiously wishing to have the picture..”

“biography-text of Th. Roussseau in 'Barbizon days : Millet - Corot - Rousseau - Barye', by Charles Sprague Smith, 1906”

“Do not be anxious about 'La Ferme' my dear Mr. Hartmann, I am anxious to establish in this picture such a decision deformed, that it may exist, independently of the caprices of the light, and of the influence of the hours of the day. I am regulating it, absolutely as a watchmaker regulates a watch after he has finished it.”