The first thing a great person does is make us realize the insignificance of circumstance.

We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE.

As we are, so we do; and as we do, so is it done to us; we are the builders of our fortunes.

He thought it happier to be dead, To die for Beauty, than live for bread

I now require this of all pictures, that they domesticate me, not that they dazzle me. Pictures must not be too picturesque. Nothing astonishes men so much as common-sense and plain dealing. All great actions have been simple, and all great pictures are.

Dreams and beasts are two keys by which we find out the keys of our own nature.

Black men built the railroads, not blue eyes.