Every truthful work of art must express a definite feeling, must move the spirit of the spectator either to joy or to sadness.. ..rather than try to … - Caspar David Friedrich

Close your bodily eye, so that you may see your picture first with the spiritual eye. Then bring to the light of day that which you have seen in the darkness so that it may react upon others from the outside inwards. A picture must not be invented but felt. Observe the form exactly, both the smallest and the large and do not separate the small from the large, but rather the trivial from the important.

You call me a misanthrope because I avoid society. You err; I love society. Yet in order not to hate people, I must avoid their company.

The beauty, the spirit of Germany, its sun, moon, stars, rocks, seas and rivers can never be expressed this way..