It's such an extraordinary supple medium that you never do quite know what paint will do.

Great art is always a way of concentrating, reinventing what is called fact, what we know of our existence- a reconcentration… tearing away the veils, the attitudes people acquire of their time and earlier time. Really good artists tear down those veils

Love and envy make a man pine, which other affections do not, because they are not so continual.

The worst men often give the best advice.

Next to religion, let your care be to promote justice.

If my people look as if they're in a dreadful fix, it's because I can't get them out of a technical dilemma.

Learning hath his infancy, when it is but beginning and almost childish; then his youth, when it is luxuriant and juvenile; then his strength of years, when it is solid and reduced; and lastly his old age, when it waxeth dry and exhaust.