Verse is a mechanism by which we can create interpretative illusions suggesting profoundities of response and understanding which far exceed the engagement or research of the writer.

The world is rid of Lord Byron, but the deadly slime of his touch still remains.

I never saw an ugly thing in my life.

It will be difficult to name a class of landscape in which the sky is not the key note, the standard of scale, and the chief organ of sentiment.

I do not consider myself at work unless I am before a six-foot canvas.

When I sit down to make a sketch from nature, the first thing I try to do is to forget that I have ever seen a picture.

Painting is a science, and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature. Why, then, may not landscape painting be considered as a branch of natural philosophy, of which pictures are but the experiments?