Trifles make perfection but perfection is not a trifle

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

I feast on wine and bread, and feasts they are.

Let whoever may have attained to so much as to have the power of drawing know that he holds a great treasure.

The power of one fair face makes my love sublime, for it has weaned my heart from low desires.

The best artist has that thought alone Which is contained within the marble shell; The sculptor's hand can only break the spell To free the figures slumbering in the stone.

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.