The difference between Talent and Genius is that Talent says things which he has never heard but once, and Genius things which he has never heard.

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.

People suffer all their life long, under the foolish superstition that they can be cheated. But it is impossible for a person to be cheated by anyone but himself.

The sower may mistake and sow his peas crookedly; the peas make no mistake, but come up and show his line.

There is no way to success in art but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day.

We are as much strangers in nature, as we are aliens from God. We do not understand the notes of birds. The fox and the deer run away from us; the bear and tiger rend us. We do not know the uses of more than a few plants, as corn and the apple, the potato and the vine. Is not the landscape, every glimpse of which hath a grandeur, a face of him?

When I walk up the piazza of Santa Croce I feel as if it were not a Florentine nor an European church but a church built by and for the human race.