“Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.”

Mankind are earthen jugs with spirits in them.

Just as there comes a warm sunbeam into every cottage window, so comes a lovebeam of God’s care and pity for every separate need.

It contributes greatly towards a man’s moral and intellectual health, to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate.

The inward pleasure of imparting pleasure – that is the choicest of all.

To the untrue man, the whole universe is false- it is impalpable- it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he himself is in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist.

Salt is white and pure – there is something holy in salt.

I want nothing to do with politicians. Their hearts wither away, and die out of their bodies. Their consciences are turned to india-rubber, or to some substance as black as that, and which will stretch as much.

If mankind were all intellect, they would be continually changing, so that one age would be entirely unlike another. The great conservative is the heart, which remains the same in all ages; so that commonplaces of a thousand years’ standing are as effective as ever.

There is an alchemy of quiet malice by which women can concoct a subtle poison from ordinary trifles.

Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

Though we speak nonsense, God will pick out the meaning of it.

My fortune somewhat resembled that of a person who should entertain an idea of committing suicide, and, altogether beyond his hopes, meet with the good hap to be murdered.

What we need for our happiness is often close at hand, if we knew but how to seek for it.

The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.

Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life of the affections as leaves are to the life of a tree. If they are wholly restrained, love will die at the roots.

The marble keeps merely a cold and sad memory of a man who would else be forgotten. No man who needs a monument ever ought to have one.

Space is the breath of art.

The Machine is Intellect mastering the drudgery of the earth that the plastic art may live; that the margin of leisure and strength by which man’s life upon earth can be made beautiful, may immeasurably widen; its function ultimately to emancipate human expression!

The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization.

Now a work of art is a work of nature, but it is a work of human nature. It is a work of the mind: and it’s a work of the mind in circumstances for an occasion which, to which, for which, and which it may be supremely natural and simple and effective.

When we speak we create.

As far as Saddam Hussein being a great military strategist, he is neither a strategist, nor is he schooled in the operational arts, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier. Other than that, he’s a great military man, I want you to know that.

I am my own experiment. I am my own work of art.

Art is the sensuous presentation of ideas.