Man supposes that he directs his life and governs his actions, when his existence is irretrievably under the control of destiny

One is never satisfied with a portrait of persons whom one knows. That is why I have always pitied portraitists. One demands so seldom of others the impossible, but demands just that of the portraitists.

We don't get to know anything but what we love.

Woe to him who would ascribe something like reason to Chance, and make a religion of surrendering to it.

If you start to think of your physical and moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.

Nature! We are enveloped and embraced by her, incapable of emerging from her and incapable of entering her more deeply. Unbidden and unwarned, she receives us into the circuits of her dance, drifting onward with us herself, until we grow tired and drop from her arms.

But the valid issue is the extent to which man knows how to form and master the material at his command.