I am almost sick and giddy with the quantity of things in my head, all tempting and wanting to be worked out.
The true work of a critic is not to make his hearer believe him, but agree with him.
Painting with all its technicalities, difficulties, and peculiar ends, is nothing but a noble and expressive language, invaluable as the vehicle of thought, but by itself nothing.
Sculpture is not the mere cutting of the form of anything in stone; it is the cutting of the effect of it. Very often the true form, in the marble, would not be in the least like itself.
The sculptor does not work for the anatomist, but for the common observer of life and nature.
Whether we force the man’s property from him by pinching his stomach, or pinching his fingers, makes some difference anatomically; morally, none whatsoever.
There is a satisfactory and available power in every one to learn drawing if he wishes, just as nearly all persons have the power of learning French, Latin or arithmetic, in a decent and useful degree.
If only the Geologists would let me alone, I could do very well, but those dreadful Hammers! I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses.
You do not see with the lens of the eye. You seen through that, and by means of that, but you see with the soul of the eye.
All true opinions are living, and show their life by being capable of nourishment; therefore of change. But their change is that of a tree not of a cloud.
Expression, sentiment, truth to nature, are essential: but all those are not enough. I never care to look at a picture again, if it be ill composed; and if well composed I can hardly leave off looking at it.
In painting as in eloquence, the greater your strength, the quieter your manner.
Always stand by form against force.
There is nothing so small but that we may honor God by asking His guidance of it, or insult Him by taking it into our own hands.
English artists are usually entirely ruined by residence in Italy.
How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty.
No small misery is caused by overworked and unhappy people, in the dark views which they necessarily take up themselves, and force upon others, of work itself.
I would rather teach drawing that my pupils may learn to love nature, than teach the looking at nature that they may learn to draw.
But whether thus submissively or not, at least be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.
Wise laws and just restraints are to a noble nation not chains, but chains of mail, – strength and defense, though something of an incumbrance.