[For men] to feel their souls withering within them, unthanked, to find their whole being sunk into an unrecognized abyss, to be counted off into a heap of mechanism numbered with its wheels, and weighed with its hammer strokes - this, nature bade not, - this, God blesses not, - this, humanity for no long time is able to endure.

Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.

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

Contrast increases the splendor of beauty, but it disturbs its influence; it adds to its attractiveness, but diminishes its power.

I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape painting.

There is rough work to be done, and rough men must do it; there is gentle work to be done, and gentlemen must do it.

Failure is less attributable to either insufficiency of means or impatience of labours than to a confused understanding of the thing actually to be done.