"Nearly all the powerful people of this age are unbelievers, the best of them in doubt and misery, the most in plodding hesitation, doing as well as they can, what practical work lies at hand."

"He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas."

"All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness."

"Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time."

"It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists."

"Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back."

"No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple."

"Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor."

"The principle of all successful effort is to try to do not what is absolutely the best, but what is easily within our power, and suited for our temperament and condition."

"No human being, however great, or powerful, was ever so free as a fish."

"An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome."

"The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most."

"The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced."

"Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions."

"It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and easy execution in the proper place, than to expand both indiscriminately."

"It is his restraint that is honorable to a person, not their liberty."

"Some slaves are scoured to their work by whips, others by their restlessness and ambition."

"What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses?"

"To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one."

"Nothing is ever done beautifully which is done in rivalship: or nobly, which is done in pride."

"To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance."

"Whether for life or death, do your own work well."

"No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change."

"Nothing can be beautiful which is not true."

"In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes."

"The first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don't mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do."

"Education is the leading of human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them."

"When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package."

"Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather."

"The first condition of education is being able to put someone to wholesome and meaningful work."

"The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it."

"The first duty of a state is to see that every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed and educated till it attains years of discretion."

"Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery."

"Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons."

"Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning."

"A thing is worth what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it."

"It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends."

"No person who is well bred, kind and modest is ever offensively plain; all real deformity means want for manners or of heart."

"All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul."

"In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it."

"A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money."

"Modern travelling is not travelling at all; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel."

"Man's only true happiness is to live in hope of something to be won by him. Reverence something to be worshipped by him, and love something to be cherished by him, forever."

"Civilization is the making of civil persons."

"Men don't and can't live by exchanging articles, but by producing them. They don't live by trade, but by work. Give up that foolish and vain title of Trades Unions; and take that of laborers Unions."

"We require from buildings two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it."

"The sky is the part of creation in which nature has done for the sake of pleasing man."

"The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world... to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one."

"No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases."

"Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close."