For those who feel it, nothing makes the soul so religious and pure as the endeavor to create something perfect; for God is perfection, and whoever strives after it, is striving after something divine. True painting is only the image of the perfection of God, a shadow of the pencil with which he paints, a melody, a striving after harmony.

It is well with me only when I have a chisel in my hand.

The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.

Love is a beautiful image Imagined or seen within the heart, The friend of virtue and gentility.

To touch is to give life.

A good artist ought never to allow impatience to overcome his sense of the main end of art - perfection

The promises of this world are, for the most part, vain phantoms; and to confide in one's self, and become something of worth and value is the best and safest course.