Doing is the great thing, for if people resolutely do what is right, they come in time to like doing it.

Of all the things that oppress me, this sense of the evil working of nature herself -my disgust at her barbarity -clumsiness -darkness -bitter mockery of herself -is the most desolating.

The art of nations is to be accumulative, just as science and history are; the work of living men not superseding, but building itself upon the work of the past.

The eye is continually influenced by what it cannot detect; nay, it is not going too far, to say that it is most influenced by what it detects least. Let the painter define, if he can, the variations of lines on which depend the change of expression in the human countenance.

Superstition, in all times and among all nations, is the fear of a spirit whose passions are those of a man, whose acts are the acts of a man; who is present in some places, not in others; who makes no places holy and not others; who is kind to one person, unkind to another; who is pleased or angry according to the degree of attention you pay him, or praise you refuse to him; who is hostile generally to human pleasure, but may be bribed by sacrifice of a part of that pleasure into permitting the rest. This, whatever form of faith it colors, is the essence of superstition.

All art is but dirtying the paper delicately.

Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.