To have been torn from the study would have been as death; my time was entirely occupied with art.

I looked long and carefully at the picture of a stag painted by Landseer - the style was good, and the brush was handled with fine effect, but he fails in copying Nature, without which the best work will be a failure.

The best recommendation I can have is my own talents, and the fruits of my own labors, and what others will not do for me, I will try and do for myself.

Mathematics was hard, dull work, I thought; geography pleased me more. For my other studies, as well as for dancing, I was quite enthusiastic.

Almost every day, instead of going to school when I ought to have gone, I usually made for the fields, where I spent the day.

Hunting, fishing, drawing, and music occupied my every moment. Cares I knew not, and cared naught about them.

There is but one kind of love; God is love, and all his creatures derive theirs from his; only it is modified by the different degrees of intelligence in different beings and creatures.