Ill-humor is nothing more than an inward feeling of our own want of merit, a dissatisfaction with ourselves which is always united with an envy that foolish vanity excites.

Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.

He who has art and science also has religion, but those who do not have them better have religion.

Poetry is the universal possession of mankind, revealing itself everywhere, and at all times, in hundreds and hundreds of men.

To me the external existence of my soul is proved from my idea of activity. If I work incessantly until my death, nature will give me another form of existence when the present can no longer sustain my spirit.

In politics as on a sickbed men toss from side to side in hope of lying more comfortably.

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