There is material enough in a single flower for the ornament of a score of cathedrals.

It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the sky. It is the part of creation in which nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man.

My mother's influence in molding my character was conspicuous. She forced me to learn daily long chapters of the Bible by heart. To that discipline and patient, accurate resolve I owe not only much of my general power of taking pains, but of the best part of my taste for literature.

Humanity and Immortality consist neither in reason, nor in love; not in the body, nor in the animation of the heart of it, nor in the thoughts and stirrings of the brain of it;--but in the dedication of them all to Him who will raise them up at the last day.

There is no music in a “rest” that I know of, but there's the making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the life melody.

Every hue throughout your work is altered by every touch you add in other places.

Nothing can be true which is either complete or vacant; every touch is false which does not suggest more than it represents, and every space is false which represents nothing.