Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.
There is no feeling, perhaps, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music,--that does not make a man sing or play the better.
When a workman knows the use of his tools, he can make a door as well as a window.
Genius ... is necessarily intolerant of fetters.
Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty.
Sir Joshua would have been glad to take her portrait; and he would have had an easier task than the historian at least in this, that he would not have had to represent the truth of change - only to give stability to one beautiful moment.