Nature is always mysterious and secret in her use of means; and art is always likest her when it is most inexplicable.

If only the Geologists would let me alone, I could do very well, but those dreadful Hammers! I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses.

As unity demanded for its expression what at first might have seemed its opposite--variety; so repose demands for its expression the implied capability of its opposite--energy. It is the most unfailing test of beauty; nothing can be ignoble that possesses it, nothing right that has it not.

Anything which elevates the mind is sublime. Greatness of matter, space, power, virtue or beauty, are all sublime.

Bread of flour is good; but there is bread, sweet as honey, if we would eat it, in a good book.

A man is born an artist as a hippopotamus is born a hippopotamus; and you can no more make yourself one than you can make yourself a giraffe.

Without mountains the air could not be purified, nor the flowing of the rivers sustained.