All that is good in art is the expression of one soul talking to another, and is precious according to the greatness of the soul that utters it.

A forest of all manner of trees is poor, if not disagreeable, in effect; a mass of one species of tree is sublime.

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

If you want knowledge, you must toil for it; if food, you must toil for it; and if pleasure, you must toil for it: toil is the law.

There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation.

Whatever merit there is in anything that I have written is simply due to the fact that when I was a child my mother daily read me a part of the Bible and daily made me learn a part of it by heart.

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