Love can be founded upon Nature only.

Anger is a great force. If you control it, it can be transmuted into a power which can move the whole world.

Grandeur and beauty are so very opposite, that you often diminish the one as you increase the other. Variety is most akin to the latter, simplicity to the former.

When misfortunes happen to such as dissent from us in matters of religion, we call them judgments; when to those of our own sect, we call them trials; when to persons neither way distinguished, we are content to attribute them to the settled course of things.

Let us be careful to distinguish modesty, which is ever amiable, from reserve, which is only prudent.

A large, branching, aged oak is perhaps the most venerable of all inanimate objects.

However, I think a plain space near the eye gives it a kind of liberty it loves; and then the picture, whether you choose the grand or beautiful, should be held up at its proper distance. Variety is the principal ingredient in beauty; and simplicity is essential to grandeur.