Engraving then, is, in brief terms, the Art of Scratch.
It is perhaps the principal admirableness of the Gothic schools of architecture, that they receive the results of the labour of inferior minds; and out of fragments full of imperfectionraise up a stately and unaccusable whole.
The true grotesque being the expression of the repose or play of a serious mind, there is a false grotesque opposed to it, which is the result of the full exertion of a frivolous one.
There are no laws by which we can write Iliads.
In all things that live there are certain irregularities, and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry.
The constant duty of every man to his fellows is to ascertain his own powers and special gifts, and to strengthen them for the help of others.
Every duty we omit obscures some truth we should have known.
There is no solemnity so deep, to a right-thinking creature, as that of dawn.
The power of painter or poet to describe what he calls an ideal thing depends upon its being to him not an ideal but a real thing. No man ever did or ever will work well but either from actual sight or sight of faith.
In the utmost solitudes of nature, the existence of hell seems to me as legibly declared by a thousand spiritual utterances as that of heaven.
It is not the church we want, but the sacrifice; not the emotion of admiration, but the act of adoration; not the gift, but the giving.
Race is precisely of as much consequence in man as it is in any animal.
To yield reverence to another, to hold ourselves and our lives at his disposal, is not slavery; often, it is the noblest state in which a man can live in this world.
The art of nations is to be accumulative, just as science and history are; the work of living men not superseding, but building itself upon the work of the past.
The proof of a thing’s being right is that it has power over the heart; that it excites us, wins us, or helps us.
All men who have sense and feeling are being continually helped; they are taught by every person they meet, and enriched by everything that falls in their way. The greatest, is he who has been oftenest aided. Originality is the observing eye.
All really great pictures exhibit the general habits of nature, manifested in some peculiar, rare, and beautiful way.
Order and system are nobler things than power.
The Divine mind is as visible in its full energy of operation on every lowly bank and mouldering stone as in the lifting of the pillars of heaven, and settling the foundation of the earth.
There is no action so slight or so mean but it may be done to a great purpose, and ennobled thereby.