The constant duty of every man to his fellows is to ascertain his own powers and special gifts, and to strengthen them for the help of others.

Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I'll tell you what you are.

There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest numbers of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest, who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others.

Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become.

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

A man is born an artist as a hippopotamus is born a hippopotamus; and you can no more make yourself one than you can make yourself a giraffe.

My entire delight was in observing without being myself noticed,- if I could have been invisible, all the better. . . to be in the midst of it, and rejoice and wonder at it, and help it if I could, - happier if it needed no help of mine, - this was the essential love of Nature in me, this the root of all that I have usefully become, and the light of all that I have rightly learned.