In his Treatise on Landscape Painting, Wang Wei wrote, "Ink painting is the highest form of painting." Certain of his lines of poetry-- "The Yangtze flows beyond the world, the mountains shimmer in the haze, there and yet not there" or "Walking to where the waters end, sitting and watching the clouds emerge" --are themselves the subtle colors of inked landscapes.
王維在其「山水訣」中寫道：「夫畫道之中，水墨為上」；而他的詩句「江流天地外，山色有無中」、「行到水窮處，坐看雲起時」，儼然就是一幅幅絕妙的淡墨山水。