The common practice of keeping up appearances with society is a mere selfish struggle of the vain with the vain.

No amount of pay ever made a good soldier, a good teacher, a good artist, or a good workman.

Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadows ceases to be enjoyed as light.

The best work never was and never will be done for money.

Such help as we can give to each other in this world is a debt to each other; and the man who perceives a superiority or a capacity in a subordinate, and neither confesses nor assists it, is not merely the withholder of kindness, but the committer of injury.

Men cannot not live by exchanging articles, but producing them. They live by work not trade.

Give me some mud off a city crossing, some ochre out of a gravel pit and a little whitening and some coal dust and I will paint you a luminous picture if you give me time to gradate my mud and subdue my dust.