If you miss the first buttonhole, you will not succeed in buttoning up your coat.

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

There is no better deliverance from the world than through art, and a man can form no surer bond with it.

Most pioneers are at the mercy of doubt at the beginning, whether of their worth, of their theories, or of the whole enigmatic field in which they labour.

It is the nature of grace always to fill spaces that have been empty.

Nature does not suffer her veil to be taken from her, and what she does not choose to reveal to the spirit, thou wilt not wrest from her by levers and screws.

We often feel that we lack something, and seem to see that very quality in someone else, promptly attributing all our own qualities to him too, and a kind of ideal contentment as well. And so the happy mortal is a model of complete perfection--which we have ourselves created.