If you can draw the stone rightly, everything within reach of art is also within yours.

All men who have sense and feeling are being continually helped; they are taught by every person they meet, and enriched by everything that falls in their way. The greatest, is he who has been oftenest aided. Originality is the observing eye.

There is no wealth but life.

And remember, child, that nothing is ever done beautifully, which is done in rivalship; or nobly, which is done in pride.

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

My mother's influence in molding my character was conspicuous. She forced me to learn daily long chapters of the Bible by heart. To that discipline and patient, accurate resolve I owe not only much of my general power of taking pains, but of the best part of my taste for literature.

Natural abilities can almost compensate for the want of every kind of cultivation, but no cultivation of the mind can make up for the want of natural abilities.