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

Depend upon it, the first universal characteristic of all great art is Tenderness, as the second is Truth.

An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome.

We may live without her, and worship without her, but we cannot remember without her. How cold is all history, how lifeless all imagery, compared to that which the living nation writes, and the uncorrupted marble bears!

The path of a good woman is indeed strewn with flowers; but they rise behind her steps, not before them.

Modern travelling is not travelling at all; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel.

So far as I have myself observed, the distinctive character of a child is to live always in the tangible present.