...an industry which can furnish results identical to nature must be the absolute in art.

La, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté Luxe, calme et volupté There, there is nothing else but grace and measure, Richness, quietness, and pleasure.

It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.

The immense profundity of thought in vulgar locutions, like holes dug by generations of ants.

My concern today is with the painting of manners of the present. The past is interesting not only by reason of the beauty which could be distilled from it by those artists for whom it was the present, but also precisely because it is the past, for its historical value. It is the same with the present. The pleasure which we derive from the representation of the present is due not only to the beauty with which it can be invested, but also to its essential quality of being present

The man who says his evening prayer is a captain posting his sentinels. He can sleep.

Evil is committed without effort, naturally, fatally; goodness is always the product of some art.