All great art is the expression of man's delight in God's work, not his own. 
If a great thing can be done, it can be done easily, but this ease is like the of ease of a tree blossoming after long years of gathering strength. 
No person who is well bred, kind and modest is ever offensively plain; all real deformity means want for manners or of heart. 
He who is not actively kind is cruel! 
It is advisable that a person know at least three things, where they are, where they are going, and what they had best do under the circumstances. 
In the range of inorganic nature. I doubt if any object can be found more perfectly beautiful than a fresh, deep snowdrift, seen under warm light. 
An unimaginative person can neither be reverent or kind. 
You may sell your work, but not your soul. 
Your art is to be the praise of something that you love. It may only be the praise of a shell or a stone. 
I do not believe that ever any building was truly great, unless it had mighty masses, vigorous and deep, of shadow mingled with its surface. 
Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty. 
A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small parcel. 
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. 
When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package. 
You shall have thousands of gold pieces; - thousands of thousands - millions - mountains of gold: where will you keep them? 
There is no action so slight or so mean but it may be done to a great purpose, and ennobled thereby. 
All traveling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity. 
If the design of the building be originally bad, the only virtue it can ever possess will be signs of antiquity. 
Education is the leading of human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them. 
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. 
The highest reward for a man's toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it. 
There is no harm in anybody thinking that Christ is in bread. The harm is in the expectation of His presence in gunpowder. 
Anything which elevates the mind is sublime. Greatness of matter, space, power, virtue or beauty, are all sublime. 
Large fortunes are all founded either on the occupation of land, or lending or the taxation of labor. 
It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists. 
There are many religions, but there is only one morality. 
God never imposes a duty without giving time to do it. 
Every duty we omit obscures some truth we should have known. 
What we think or what we know or what we believe is in the end of little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what we do 
Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery. 
God intends no man to live in this world without working, but it seems to me no less evident that He intends every man to be happy in his work. 
There is material enough in a single flower for the ornament of a score of cathedrals. 
Great art is precisely that which never was, nor will be taught, it is preeminently and finally the expression of the spirits of great men. 
A forest of all manner of trees is poor, if not disagreeable, in effect; a mass of one species of tree is sublime. 
You should read books like you take medicine, by advice, and not by advertisement. 
No one can become rich by the efforts of only their toil, but only by the discovery of some method of taxing the labor of others. 
Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy.Bothyourreligionand policy must be basedon it. 
Always stand by form against force. 
Multitudes think they like to do evil; yet no man ever really enjoyed doing evil since God made the world. 
Order and system are nobler things than power. 
To speak and act truth with constancy and precision is nearly as difficult, and perhaps as meretorious, as to speak it under intimidation or penalty 
Contrast increases the splendor of beauty, but it disturbs its influence; it adds to its attractiveness, but diminishes its power. 
Many thoughts are so dependent upon the language in which they are clothed that they would lose half their beauty if otherwise expressed. 
The distinctive character of a child is to always live in the tangible present. 
Beautiful art can only be produced by people who have beautiful things about them. 
There are no laws by which we can write Iliads. 
We are, after all, only trustees of the wealth we possess. Without the community and its resources ... there would be little wealth for anyone. 
One of the worst diseases to which the human creature is liable is its disease of thinking. 
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. 
The power of association is stronger than the power of beauty; therefore, the power of association is the power of beauty. 
Government and cooperation are in all things the laws of life. Anarchy and competition, the laws of death. 
As in the instances of alchemy, astrology, witchcraft, and other such popular creeds, political economy, has a plausible idea at the root of it. 
I know well that happiness is in little things. 
If you do not wish for His kingdom, don't pray for it. But if you do, you must do more than pray for it, you must work for it. 
It is better to be nobly remembered than nobly born. 
Of all God's gifts to the sighted man, color is holiest, the most divine, the most solemn. 
In order that a man may be happy, it is necessary that he should not only be capable of his work, but a good judge of his work. 
We are only advancing in life, whose hearts are getting softer, our blood warmer, our brains quicker, and our spirits entering into living peace. 
It does not matter what the whip is; it is none the less a whip, because you have cut thongs for it out of your own souls. 
All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent. 
Know thyself, for through thyself only thou canst know God. 
If you can draw the stone rightly, everything within reach of art is also within yours. 
Some slaves are scoured to their work by whips, others by their restlessness and ambition. 
A book worth reading is worth owning. 
Doing is the great thing, for if people resolutely do what is right, they come in time to like doing it. 
It takes a great deal of living to get a little deal of learning. 