No one can do me any good by loving me; I have more love than I need or could do any good with; but people do me good by making me love them – which isn’t easy.
I know well that happiness is in little things.
There is no music in a “rest” that I know of, but there’s the making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the life melody.
The plea of ignorance will never take away our responsibilities.
Ornamentation is the principal part of architecture, considered as a subject of fine art.
Science has to do with facts, art with phenomena. To science, phenomena are of use only as they lead to facts; and to art, facts are of use only as they lead to phenomena.
It is a matter of the simplest demonstration, that no man can be really appreciated but by his equal or superior.
To cultivate sympathy you must be among living creatures, and thinking about them; and to cultivate admiration, you must be among beautiful things and looking at them.
Disorder in a drawing-room is vulgar; in an antiquary’s study, not; the black battle-stain on a soldier’s face is not vulgar, but the dirty face of a housemaid is.
Morality does not depend on religion.
Of all the affected, sapless, soulless, beginningless, endless, topless, bottomless, topsiturviest, scrannel- pipiest, tongs and boniest doggerel of sounds I ever endured the deadliest of, that eternityof nothing wasthe deadliest.
Butforme, theAlps and their peoplewerealikebeautiful in their snow, and their humanity; and I wanted, neither for them nor myself, sight of any thrones in heaven but the rocks, or of any spirits in heaven but the clouds.
People are always expecting to get peace in heaven: but you know whatever peace they get there will be ready-made. Whatever making of peace they can be blest for, must be on the earth here.
The virtue of the imagination is its reaching, by intuition and intensity, a more essential truth than is seen at the surface of things.
Of human work none but what is bad can be perfect in its own bad way.
And besides; the problem of land, at its worst, is a bye one; distribute the earth as you will, the principal question remains inexorable, Who is to dig it? Which of us, in brief word, is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest, and for what pay?
Science studies the relations of things to each other: but art studies only their relations to man.
Levi’s station in life was the receipt of custom; and Peter’s, the shore of Galilee; and Paul’s, the antechambers of the High- Priest, which “station in life” each had to leave, with brief notice.
It is a good and safe rule to sojourn in every place as if you meant to spend your life there, never omitting an opportunity of doing a kindness, or speaking a true word, or making a friend.
Pleasure comes through toil, and not by self indulgence and indolence. When one gets to love work, his life is a happy one.