Desire is the presentiment of our inner abilities, and the forerunner of our ultimate accomplishments.

Man knows himself only insofar as he knows the world, becoming aware of it if only within himself, and of himself self only within it. Each new subject, well observed, opens up within us a new organ of thought.

The eye doesn't see any shapes, it sees only what is differentiated through light and dark or through colors.

By the artist's seizing any one object from nature, that object no longer is part of nature. One can go so far as to say that theartist creates the object in that very moment by emphasizing its significant, characteristic, and interesting aspects or, rather, by adding the higher values.

Life is but a preparation for what there is to come.

An absent friend gives us friendly company when we are well assured of his happiness.

A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows and rows of natural objects, classified with name and form.