Without friends the world is but a wilderness.

As you work, the mood grows on you. There are certain images which suddenly get hold of me and I really want to do them. But it's true to say that the excitement and possibilities are in the working and obviously can only come in the working.

In all superstition wise men follow fools.

Believing that I was born for the service of mankind, and regarding the care of the commonwealth as a kind of common property which, like the air and the water, belongs to everybody, I set myself to consider in what way mankind might be best served, and what service I was myself best fitted by nature to perform.

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

Painting is the pattern of one's own nervous system being projected on canvas.

Many a man's strength is in opposition, and when he faileth, he grows out of use.