Other men used their effete faiths and mean faculties with a high moral purpose. The Venetian gave the most earnest faith, and the lordliest faculty, to gild the shadows of an antechamber, or heighten the splendours of a holiday.
It is better to be nobly remembered than nobly born.
If we pretend to have reached either perfection or satisfaction, we have degraded ourselves and our work. God’s work only may express that, but ours may never have that sentence written upon it, Behold it was very good.
Mighty of heart, mighty of mind, magnanimous-to be this is indeed to be great in life.
Childhood often holds a truth with its feeble finger, which the grasp of manhood cannot retain, – which it is the pride of utmost age to recover.
I am far more provoked at being thought foolish by foolish people, than pleased at being thought sensible by sensible people; and the average proportion of the numbers of each is not to my advantage.
Absolute ugliness is admitted as rarely as perfect beauty; but degrees of it more or less distinct are associated with whatever has the nature of death and sin, just as beauty is associated with what has the nature of virtue and of life.
Variety is a positive requisite even in the character of our food.
There is nothing that this age, from whatever standpoint we survey it, needs more, physically, intellectually, and morally, than thorough ventilation.
If you do not wish for His kingdom do not pray for it. But if you do you must do more than pray for it, you must work for it.
If the thing is impossible, you need not trouble yourselves about it; if possible, try for it.
There is rough work to be done, and rough men must do it; there is gentle work to be done, and gentlemen must do it.
Why is one man richer than another? Because he is more industrious, more persevering and more sagacious.
The only absolutely and unapproachably heroic element in the soldier’s work seems to be-that he is paid little for it-and regularly.
Nobody cares much at heart about Titian, only there is a strange undercurrent of everlasting murmur about his name, which means the deep consent of all great men that he is greater than they.
I believe that the sight is a more important thing than the drawing...
There was always more in the world than men could see, walked they ever so slowly; they will see it no better for going fast. The really precious things are thought and sight, not pace.
Your art is to be the praise of something that you love. It may only be the praise of a shell or a stone.
The object of true education is to make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy them.
I used to lie down on the grass and draw the blades as they grew – until every square foot of meadow, or mossy bank, became a possession to me.