It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and easy execution in the proper place, than to expand both indiscriminately.

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.

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.

Once thoroughly our own, the knowledge ceases to give us pleasure.

All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.

There is no solemnity so deep, to a right-thinking creature, as that of dawn.

To be taught to read—what is the use of that, if you know not whether what you read is false or true? To be taught to write or to speak—but what is the use of speaking, if you have nothing to say? To be taught to think—nay, what is the use of being able to think, if you have nothing to think of? But to be taught to see is to gain word and thought at once, and both true.