Such help as we can give to each other in this world is a debt to each other; and the man who perceives a superiority or a capacity in a subordinate, and neither confesses nor assists it, is not merely the withholder of kindness, but the committer of injury.

One of the worst diseases to which the human creature is liable is its disease of thinking.

Ornamentation is the principal part of architecture, considered as a subject of fine art.

All that is good in art is the expression of one soul talking to another, and is precious according to the greatness of the soul that utters it.

It is a shallow criticism that would define poetry as confined to literary productions in rhyme and meter rhythm. The written poem is only poetry talking, and the statue, the picture, and the musical composition are poetry acting. Milton and Goethe, at their desks, were not more truly poets than Phidias with his chisel, Raphael at his easel, or deaf Beethoven bending over his piano, inventing and producing strains, which he himself could never hope to hear.

Success by the laws of competition signifies a victory over others by obtaining the direction and profits of their work. This is the real source of all great riches.

All great art is the expression of man's delight in God's work, not his own.