A fine picture is but the image of nature; a finished ballet is nature herself.

I cannot avoid condemning all those who, from self-conceit have the pretension to imitate great artists of the past. If their powers of emotion be weak, their powers of expression will be likewise.

Dancing and ballets would undoubtedly take on a new lease on life, if the customs established by a spirit of fear and jealousy did not in some way close the path of glory.

I will make an average man into an average dancer, provided he be passably well made. I will teach him how to move his arms and legs, to turn his head. I will give him steadiness, brilliancy and speed; but I cannot endow him with that fire and intelligence, those graces and that expression of feeling which is the soul of true pantomime.

The defects born of habit are innumerable. I see every child occupied in some way in disarranging and disfiguring his physique; some displace the ankles through the habit they have contracted of standing on one leg only and playing, as it were, with the other; placing it in a position which though disagreeable and strained, does not fatigue them, because the softness of their tendons and muscles lend themselves to all kinds of movement.

A fine picture is but the image of nature; a finished ballet is nature herself.

It is shameful that dancing should renounce the empire it might assert over the mind and only endeavor to please the sight.