Realism is simply Romanticism that has lost its reason...that is its reason for existing.

There'd be a lot less scandal if people didn't idealize sin and pose as sinners.

Criticism is only words about words, and of what use are words about such words as these?

All things are from God; and above all, reason and imagination and the great gifts of the mind. They are good in themselves; and we must not altogether forget their origin even in their perversion.

There is nothing harder to learn than painting and nothing which most people take less trouble about learning.

A crown of roses is also a crown of thorns.

All literary style, especially national style, is made up of such coincidences, which are a spiritual sort of puns. That is why style is untranslatable.