We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.

The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul

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.

There are dull and bright, sacred and profane, coarse and fine egotists. It is a disease that, like influenza, falls on all constitutions. In the distemper known to physicians as chorea, the patient sometimes turns round, and continues to spin slowly in one spot. Is egotism a metaphysical varioloid of this malady?

Whilst we want cities as the centres where the best things are found, cities degrade us by magnifying trifles.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.

The book written against fame and learning has the author's name on the title-page.