Those who are inspired by a model other than Nature, labor in vain.

A man was desired to rise from bed because the sun was already up. He replied: "If I had as far to go and as much to do as he has, I should be up by now; but having but a little way to go, I shall not get up yet."

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.

Anyone who invokes authors in discussion is not using his intelligence but his memory.

The variety of colour in objects cannot be discerned at a great distance, excepting in those parts which are directly lighted up by the solar rays.

Experience never misleads; what you are misled by is only your judgment, and this misleads you by anticipating results from experience of a kind that is not produced by your experiments.

In fact, whatever exists in the universe, in essence, in appearance, in the imagination, the painter has first in his mind and then in his hands ... it lies in his power to create them . . .