Depend upon it, the first universal characteristic of all great art is Tenderness, as the second is Truth.

The proof of a thing's being right is that it has power over the heart; that it excites us, wins us, or helps us.

You talk of the scythe of Time, and the tooth of Time: I tell you, Time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm - we who smite like the scythe. It is ourselves who abolish - ourselves who consume: we are the mildew, and the flame.

How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty: most treacherous, indeed, of all phantoms; for the feeblest ray of reason might surely show us, that not only its attainment, but its being, was impossible..... There is no such thing in the universe. There can never be. The stars have it not; the earth has it not; the sea has it not; and we men have the mockery and semblance of it only for our heaviest punishment.

Man's only true happiness is to live in hope of something to be won by him.

The only way to understand these difficult parts of the Bible, or even to approach them with safety, is first to read and obey the easy ones.

It was stated, . . . that the value of architecture depended on two distinct characters:--the one, the impression it receives from human power; the other, the image it bears of the natural creation.