William Morris Hunt's "Talks on Art:" Persistance

H. Herbert La Thange "The Water Splash"

"Inspiration is nothing without work."

"We are not satisfied to do simply the things which we can do. We must draw something too hard for us. We must sing songs that have notes too high for us. How rare to hear a singer whose voice is not strained to reach impossible tones. Who want to hear the highest tone that you can sing? We want to feel that there is a reserved force."

"You don't know what persistent effort is. Think of the violin student in this Paris Conservatoire, who was more than a year trying to bend his thumb as he had not been taught to do in the provinces."

"'It seems as if nothing would ever come to me!' Nothing comes into anybody's head. It is persistent love of a thing that tells finally. We don't try, for fear that we can't."

"When I was a little boy I wanted to learn the violin, but a certain man discouraged me. 'Don't learn the violin. It's so hard!' I could kick that man now. It is easier to eat dip-toast than to play the violin, but it doesn't meet the same want."

"Don't be too difficult with yourself. One's self can't stand it. It discourages production. Go ahead. Produce! Produce! and don't stop to judge till the last sample has appeared. The horses which have won four-mile races have never stopped at the end of the first mile to criticize their own pace. Others will do this; and whatever others will attend to, leave them behind to attend to it!"

"Should you grow discouraged at your slow progress, try for a year or two to play a violin solo." 

"Work is a stimulus to work - and loafing is a stimulus to laziness."

(Excerpts from Hunt's "Talks on Art.")