A noble soul alone can noble souls attract; And knows alone, as ye, to hold them.

Oh happy he who still can hope in our day to breathe the truth while plunged in seas of error! What we don't know is really what we need, and what we know is of no use to us whatever!

Theories are usually the over-hasty efforts of an impatient understanding that would gladly be rid of phenomena, and so puts in their place pictures, notions, nay, often mere words.

Painting predicates what man wants to see, and what man ought to see, not what he ordinarily sees.

If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.

The miller believes that all the wheat grows so that his mill keeps running.

A school of art or of anything else is to be looked on as a single individual, who keeps talking to himself for a hundred years, and feels an extreme satisfaction with his own circle of favorite ideas, be they ever so silly.