Everything that you can see in the world around you presents itself to your eyes only as an arrangement of patches of different colors.

... A power of obtaining veracity in the representation of material and tangible things, which, within certain limits and conditions, is unimpeachable, has now been placed in the hands of all men, almost without labour. (1853)

Many thoughts are so dependent upon the language in which they are clothed that they would lose half their beauty if otherwise expressed.

When the whole world turns clown, and paints itself red with its own hearts blood instead of vermilion, it is something else than comic.

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.

It is a good and safe rule to sojourn in every place as if you meant to spend your life there, never omitting an opportunity of doing a kindness, or speaking a true word, or making a friend.

He who can take no interest in what is small will take false interest in what is great.