Caspar David Friedrich Quotations

God is everywhere, in the smallest grain of sand.

The feelings of another person should never be imposed upon us as a law.

I have to stay alone in order to fully contemplate and feel nature.

What the newer landscape artists see in a circle of a hundred degrees in Nature they press together unmercifully into an angle of vision of only forty-five degrees. And furthermore, what is in Nature separated by large spaces, is compressed into a cramped space and overfills and oversatiates the eye, creating an unfavorable and disquieting effect on the viewer.

I am not so weak as to submit to the demands of the age when they go against my convictions. I spin a cocoon around myself; let others do the same. I shall leave it to time to show what will come of it: a brilliant butterfly or maggot.

A painting which does not take its inspiration from the heart is nothing more than futile juggling.

The pure, frank sentiments we hold in our hearts are the only truthful sources of art.

Just as the pious man prays without speaking a word and the Almighty hearkens unto him, so the artist with true feelings paints and the sensitive man understands and recognizes it.

The divine is everywhere, even in a grain of sand; there I represented it in the reeds.

The artist should paint not only what he sees before him, but also what he sees within him. If, however, he sees nothing within him, then he should also refrain from painting that which he sees before him. Otherwise, his pictures will be like those folding screens behind which one expects to find only the sick or the dead.