To be taught to read—what is the use of that, if you know not whether what you read is false or true? To be taught to write or to speak—but what is the use of speaking, if you have nothing to say? To be taught to think—nay, what is the use of being able to think, if you have nothing to think of? But to be taught to see is to gain word and thought at once, and both true.

I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape painting.

Labor rids us of three great evils; tediousness, vice, and poverty.

Perfect taste is the faculty of receiving the greatest possible pleasure from those material sources which are attractive to oar moral nature in its purity and perfection.

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

If we pretend to have reached either perfection or satisfaction, we have degraded ourselves and our work. God's work only may express that, but ours may never have that sentence written upon it, Behold it was very good.

It is far better to give work that is above a person, than to educate the person to be above their work.