I tell you (dogmatically, if you like to call it so, knowing it well) a square inch of man's engraving is worth all the photographs that were ever dipped in acid... Believe me, photography can do against line engraving just what Madame Tussaud's wax-work can do against sculpture. That and no more. (1865)

Milton saw not, and Beethoven heard not, but the sense of beauty was upon them, and they fain must speak.

God gives us always strength enough, and sense enough, for what He wants us to do; if we either tire ourselves or puzzle ourselves, it is our own fault.

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.

Without the perfect sympathy with the animals around them, no gentleman's education, no Christian education, could be of any possible use.

Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty.

When we build, let us think that we build forever.