The eye is continually influenced by what it cannot detect; nay, it is not going too far, to say that it is most influenced by what it detects least. Let the painter define, if he can, the variations of lines on which depend the change of expression in the human countenance.

All art is but dirtying the paper delicately.

He who has once stood beside the grave, to look back upon the companionship which has been forever closed, feeling how impotent there are the wild love, or the keen sorrow, to give one instant's pleasure to the pulseless heart, or atone in the lowest measure to the departed spirit for the hour of unkindness, will scarcely for the future incur that debt to the heart which can only be discharged to the dust.

No nation can last which has made a mob of itself, however generous at heart.

The virtue of the imagination is its reaching, by intuition and intensity, a more essential truth than is seen at the surface of things.

To yield reverence to another, to hold ourselves and our lives at his disposal, is not slavery; often, it is the noblest state in which a man can live in this world.

The art of nations is to be accumulative, just as science and history are; the work of living men not superseding, but building itself upon the work of the past.