If a great thing can be done, it can be done easily, but this ease is like the of ease of a tree blossoming after long years of gathering strength.

Depend upon it, the first universal characteristic of all great art is Tenderness, as the second is Truth. I find this more and more every day: an infinitude of tenderness is the chief gift and inheritance of all the truly great men. It is sure to involve a relative intensity of disdain towards base things, and an appearance of sternness and arrogance in the eyes of all hard, stupid, and vulgar people

At every moment of our lives we should be trying to find out, not in what we differ with other people, but in what we agree with them.

Variety is a positive requisite even in the character of our food.

Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of a bag of nails, with here and there an also dropped hammer.

Men are merely on a lower or higher stage of an eminence, whose summit is God's throne infinitely above all; and there is just as much reason for the wisest as for the simplest man being discontent with his position, as respects the real quantity of knowledge he possesses.

It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists.