The question is not what man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate.

As unity demanded for its expression what at first might have seemed its opposite--variety; so repose demands for its expression the implied capability of its opposite--energy. It is the most unfailing test of beauty; nothing can be ignoble that possesses it, nothing right that has it not.

No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.

To cultivate sympathy you must be among living creatures, and thinking about them; and to cultivate admiration, you must be among beautiful things and looking at them.

Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.

There is in every animal's eye a dim image and gleam of humanity, a flash of strange light through which their life looks out and up to our great mystery of command over them, and claims the fellowship of the creature if not of the soul.

The proof of a thing's being right is that it has power over the heart; that it excites us, wins us, or helps us.