Knowledge ... shall always bear witness like a clarion to its creator.

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.

The lover is moved by the beloved object as the senses are by sensual objects; and they unite and become one and the same thing. The work is the first thing born of this union; if the thing loved is base the lover becomes base.

After painting comes Sculpture, a very noble art, but one that does not in the execution require the same supreme ingenuity as the art of painting, since in two most important and difficult particulars, in foreshortening and in light and shade, for which the painter has to invent a process, sculpture is helped by nature. Moreover, Sculpture does not imitate color which the painter takes pains to attune so that the shadows accompany the lights.

Nature never breaks her own laws.

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 . . .

In time and with water, everything changes.