No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.

Science studies the relations of things to each other: but art studies only their relations to man.

When men do not love their hearth, nor reverence their thresholds, it is a sign that they have dishonoured both ... Our God is a house-hold God, as well as a heavenly one; He has an altar in every man's dwelling.

In old times men used their powers of painting to show the objects of faith, in later times they use the objects of faith to show their powers of painting.

No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.

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

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