It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.

I foresee it and yet I hardly ever carry it out as I foresee it. It transforms itself by the actual paint. I don't in fact know very often what the paint will do, and it does many things which are very much better than I could make it do.

A picture should be a re-creation of an event rather than an illustration of an object; but there is no tension in the picture unless there is a struggle with the object.

The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.

God loveth the clean.

Whence we see spiders, flies, or ants entombed and preserved forever in amber, a more than royal tomb.

The first question concerning the Celestial Bodies is whether there be a system, that is whether the world or universe compose together one globe, with a center, or whether the particular globes of earth and stars be scattered dispersedly, each on its own roots, without any system or common center.