Eugene Delacroix: Thoughts on Painting, Poetry, Ideas, Modesty and Love.

http://www.wikiart.org/en/theodore-gericault/portrait-of-eugene-delacroix-1819

Delacroix's friend and frequent correspondant, Theodore Gericault.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A9odore_G%C3%A9ricault
"...Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault (French: [ʒɑ̃ lwi ɑ̃dʁe teodoʁ ʒeʁiko]; 26 September 1791 – 26 January 1824) was an influential French painter and lithographer, known for The Raft of the Medusa and other paintings. Although he died young, he was one of the pioneers of the Romantic movement..."

Self-portrait by Theodore Gericault.


Eugene Delacroix on Painting and Poetry:
"How is one to make something that is complete, condensed and yet flowing? Painting and poetry, it's all the same with the same frustrations. You have to go back to it often with fresh tools. You need a fearless eye which will span abysses wihtout flinching. It's not enough for the springs of imagination to be active and fertile: you need a firm and subtle mind, concentrated and yet able to expand, to bear the weight of invention, to sustain it throughout abd develop it without brushing off that evanescent bloom that colours thought while it is still thought, and which fades so rapidly when thought has assumed its visible and conrete form."

On Love:
"The more one has loved, the bitterer are one's tears."

On Heart's desires:
"...one is not responsible for one's heart's inclinations, any more than for its position between a pair of lungs for which, equally, one is not responsible."

On love for one's friends:
"...departures are like deaths. When friends part, the hope of seeing one another again counts for nothing. You clihng to that last moment when you still enjoy the sight of the one you love. There is one idea that always grieves me: I know that my friend exists and yet he does not exist for me."

On ideas:
"When I think I've caught a glimpse of some idea within myself, I try to pursue it, and I cannot bring myself to say anything commonplace, inessential to my thought."

On Modesty:
"You speak of my 'treasures' as though you yourself are very poor. Is this a result of that so-called virtue, modesty? What is modesty, after all? Does it consist in failing to recognise one's own merits, in not feeling them? That at least is rare. Or in not impressing others with one's superiority, in not boasting of it? That is surely true modesty, if such a thing exists at all. I start from this point to examine myself in all sincerity of heart, and to try to discern what I really think of myself."