Ou believes that the Confucian concepts of virtue and morality and the Taoist concepts of emptiness, quiet, the plain, and the simple have had a deep and lasting influence on the tradition of Chinese painting.
歐豪年認為，孔子的「仁」、「德」觀念及老莊的「無」而能「有」，乃至於「虛、靜、素、樸」等觀念，對中國繪畫傳統的影響既深且遠。