"Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance."

"The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education."

"Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadows ceases to be enjoyed as light."

"The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him."

"Large fortunes are all founded either on the occupation of land, or lending or the taxation of labor."

"Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty."

"Natural abilities can almost compensate for the want of every kind of cultivation, but no cultivation of the mind can make up for the want of natural abilities."

"Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation."

"Do not think of your faults, still less of other's faults; look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes."

"All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time."

"Doing is the great thing, for if people resolutely do what is right, they come in time to like doing it."

"All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the pathetic fallacy."

"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."

"Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts - the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art."

"To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education."

"The strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it."

"It is impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture. That which I have insisted upon as the life of the whole, that spirit which is given only by the hand and eye of the workman, can never be recalled."

"A great thing can only be done by a great person; and they do it without effort."

"I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape painting."

"To give alms is nothing unless you give thought also."

"The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions."

"A book worth reading is worth buying."

"Every great person is always being helped by everybody; for their gift is to get good out of all things and all persons."

"I believe the right question to ask, respecting all ornament, is simply this; was it done with enjoyment, was the carver happy while he was about it?"

"The essence of lying is in deception, not in words."

"That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings."

"It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us."

"You may either win your peace or buy it: win it, by resistance to evil; buy it, by compromise with evil."

"The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and to be bought for it."

"Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you."

"Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime."

"Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I'll tell you what you are."

"Men cannot not live by exchanging articles, but producing them. They live by work not trade."

"There are no such things as Flowers there are only gladdened Leaves."

"He that would be angry and sin not, must not be angry with anything but sin."

"There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation."

"Cursing is invoking the assistance of a spirit to help you inflict suffering. Swearing on the other hand, is invoking, only the witness of a spirit to an statement you wish to make."

"The art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men's lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque."

"There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man's lawful prey."

"There is no wealth but life."

"It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect."

"Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books."

"Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder."

"Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs."

"Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together."

"Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness."

"How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?"

"You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion."

"When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece."

"Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth."