What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.

If you would help another man, you must do so in minute particulars.

Listen to the fool's reproach! It is a kingly title!

What has reason to do with the art of painting?

What seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be, and is productive of the most dreadful consequences to those to whom it seems to be, even of torments, despair, eternal death.

I am more famed in Heaven for my works than I could well conceive. In my brain are studies & chambers filled with books & pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of Eternity before my mortal life; and whose works are the delight & study of Archangels. Why, then, should I be anxious about the riches or fame of mortality?

Want of money and the distress of a thief can never be alleged as the cause of his thieving, for many honest people endure greater hardships with fortitude. We must therefore seek the cause elsewhere than in want of money, for that is the miser's passion, not the thief s.