Honesty is one part of eloquence. We persuade others by being in earnest ourselves.

To impress the idea of power on others, they must be made in some way to feel it.

The humblest painter is a true scholar; and the best of scholars the scholar of nature.

When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country.

Conceit is vanity driven from all other shifts, and forced to appeal to itself for admiration.

We are the creatures of imagination, passion, and self-will, more than of reason or even of self-interest. Even in the common transactions and daily intercourse of life, we are governed by whim, caprice, prejudice, or accident. The falling of a teacup puts us out of temper for the day; and a quarrel that commenced about the pattern of a gown may end only with our lives.

The Princess Borghese, Bonaparte's sister, who was no saint, sat to Canova as a reclining Venus, and being asked if she did not feel a little uncomfortable, replied, "No. There was a fire in the room."