Confronted by outstanding merit, there is no way of saving one's ego except by love

Such is the frailty of man that even where he makes the truest and most forcible impression in the memory, in the heart of his beloved, there also he must perish.

Art is a severe business; most serious when employed in grand and sacred objects. The artist stands higher than art, higher than the object. He uses art for his purposes, and deals with the object after his own fashion.

He is happy as well as great who needs neither to obey nor to command in order to be something.

If a man or woman is born ten years sooner or later, their whole aspect and performance shall be different.

Those only obtain love, for the most part, who seek it not.

Many young painters would never have taken their pencils in hand if they could have felt, known, and understood, early enough, what really produced a master like Raphael.