Make an effort to collect the good features from many beautiful faces.

If we make mistakes in our first compositions and do not know them, we may not amend them.

Although human ingenuity may devise various inventions which, by the help of various instruments, answer to one and the same purpose, yet will it never discover any inventions more beautiful, more simple or more practical than those of nature, because in her inventions there is nothing lacking and nothing superfluous; and she makes use of no counterpoise when she constructs the limbs of animals in such a way as to correspond to the motion of their bodies, but she puts into them the soul of the body.

What is fair in men, passes away, but not so in art

The lie is so vile, that even if it were in speaking well of godly things, it would take off something from God's grace; and Truth is so excellent, that if it praises but small things they become noble.

The painter who draws by practise and judgment of the eye without the use of reason is like the mirror which reproduces within itself all the objects which are set opposite to it without knowledge of the same.

The body of the earth is of the nature of a fish... because it draws water as its breath instead of air.