"I have seen big painting here. When I had looked at all the paintings by all the masters I had known I could not help saying to myself all the time, it's very pretty but it's not all yet. It ought to be better, but now I have seen what I always thought ought to have been done and what did not seem to me impossible. O what satisfaction it gave me to see the good Spanish work so good so strong so reasonable so free from every affectation. It stands out like nature itself."

“If America is to produce great painters and if young artists wish to assume a place in the history of the art of their country, their first desire should be to remain in America to peer deeper into the heart of American life, rather than spend their time abroad obtaining a superficial view of the art of the Old World. In the days when I studied abroad conditions were entirely different. The facilities for study in this country were meagre. There were even no life classes in our art schools and schools of painting. Naturally one had to seek instruction elsewhere, abroad. Today we need not do that.”

“A teacher can do very little for a pupil and should only be thankful if he don't hinder him, and the greater the master, mostly the less he can say.”

“Thomas Eakins letters online at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art”

“I have never discovered that the nude could be studied in any way except the way I have adopted. All the muscles must be pointed out. To do this all the drapery must be removed.”

“As some of you know, I some years ago — a few — painted a picture of Mr. Whitman. I began in the usual way, but soon found that the ordinary methods wouldn't do — that technique, rules and traditions would have to be thrown aside; that before all else, he was to be treated as a man, whatever became of what are commonly called the principles of art.”

“Strain your brain more than your eye... You can copy a thing to a certain limit. Then you must use intellect.”