In the utmost solitudes of nature, the existence of hell seems to me as legibly declared by a thousand spiritual utterances as that of heaven.

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

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

Now the basest thought possible concerning man is, that he has no spiritual nature; and the foolishest misunderstanding of him possible is, that he has, or should have, no animal nature. For his nature is nobly animal, nobly spiritual,--coherently and irrevocably so; neither part of it may, but at its peril, expel, despise, or defy the other.

One of the prevailing sources of misery and crime is in the generally accepted assumption, that because things have been wrong a long time, it is impossible they will ever be right.

He that would be angry and sin not, must not be angry with anything but sin.

Greater completion marks the progress of art, absolute completion usually its decline.