If only the Geologists would let me alone, I could do very well, but those dreadful Hammers! I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses.

Anything which elevates the mind is sublime. Greatness of matter, space, power, virtue or beauty, are all sublime.

To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality.

Obedience is, indeed, founded on a kind of freedom, else it would become mere subjugation, but that freedom is only granted that obedience may be more perfect; and thus while a measure of license is necessary to exhibit the individual energies of things, the fairness and pleasantness and perfection of them all consist in their restraint.

The step between practical and theoretic science, is the step between the miner and the geologist, the apocathecary and the chemist.

The names of great painters are like passing-bells: in the name of Velasquez you hear sounded the fall of Spain; .in the name of Titian, that of Venice; in the name of Leonardo, that of Milan; in the name of Raphael, that of Rome. And there is profound justice in this, for in proportion to the nobleness of the power is the guilt of its use for purposes vain or vile; and hitherto the greater the art, the more surely has it been used, and used solely, for the decoration of pride or the provoking of sensuality.

Great art is precisely that which never was, nor will be taught, it is preeminently and finally the expression of the spirits of great men.