You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.

What is poetry? The suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble emotions.

To follow art for the sake of being a great man, and therefore to cast about continually for some means of achieving position or attracting admiration, is the surest way of ending in total extinction.

Wherever men are noble, they love bright colour; and wherever they can live healthily, bright colour is given them—in sky, sea, flowers, and living creatures.

Science lives only in quiet places, and with odd people, mostly poor.

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.

What is the cheapest to you now is likely to be the dearest to you in the end.