The good painter must paint two things: a person and the essence of his soul.

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

O time, swift robber of all created things, how many kings, how many nations hast thou undone, and how many changes of states and of various events have happened since the wondrous forms of this fish perished here in this cavernous and winding recess. Now destroyed by time thou liest patiently in this confined space with bones stripped and bare; serving as a support and prop for the superimposed mountain.

The light and heat of the universe comes from the sun, and its cold and darkness from the withdrawal of the sun.

Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold.

And you who wish to represent by words the form of man and all the aspects of his membrification, relinquish that idea. For the more minutely you describe the more you will confine the mind of the reader, and the more you will keep him from the knowledge of the thing described. And so it is necessary to draw and to describe.

It vexes me greatly that having to earn my living has forced me to interrupt the work and to attend to small matters.