The man who accepts the laissez-faire doctrine would allow his garden to grow wild so that roses might fight it out with the weeds and the fittest might survive.

Genius is only a superior power of seeing.

Fit yourself for the best society, and then, never enter it.

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.

An artist should be well read in the best books, and thoroughly high bred, both in heart and bearing. In a word, he should be fit for the best society, and should keef out of it.

All really great pictures exhibit the general habits of nature, manifested in some peculiar, rare, and beautiful way.

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