... the business of life shuts us up within the environs of London and within sight of human advancement, which I should be so very glad to believe in without seeing.

Loquacity with tongue or pen is its own reward -- or, punishment.

In bed our yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it be but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some resistance to the past—sensations which assert themselves against tyrannous memories.

Character is not cut in marble - it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do.

Trouble comes to us all in this life: we set our hearts on things which it isn't God's will for us to have, and then we go sorrowing.

What people do who go into politics I can't think; it drives me almost mad to see mismanagement over only a few hundred acres.

... the true seeing is within; and painting stares at you with an insistent imperfection.