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.

If we pretend to have reached either perfection or satisfaction, we have degraded ourselves and our work. God's work only may express that, but ours may never have that sentence written upon it, Behold it was very good.

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.

Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think.

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

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

Greatness is not a teachable nor gainable thing, but the expression of the mind of a God-made great man.