Decorative and edifying. That is what I want art to be before anything else. - Maurice Denis

The common error of us all [in late Impressionism] was to search above all for the light. It would have been better first to search for the Kingdom of God and his justice, that is to say for the expression of our spirit in beauty, and the rest would have arrived naturally.

Don't lose sight of the essential objectives of painting, which are expression, emotion, delectation; to understand the means, to paint decoratively, to exalt form and color.

Painting is first of all the art of imitation, and not the servant of some imaginary 'purity'