The science of design, or of line-drawing, if you like to use this term, is the source and very essence of painting, sculpture, architecture... Sometimes... it seems to me that... all the works of the human brain and hand are either design itself or a branch of that art.

Genius is infinite painstaking.

Souls will never ascend to Heaven until the sight of beauty lifts them there.

No thought is born in me that does not bear the image of death.

If I love in thee, beloved, only what thou lovest most, do not be angry; for so one spirit is enamoured of another.

Every beauty which is seen here by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all are come.

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