All art is but dirtying the paper delicately.

To be taught to read—what is the use of that, if you know not whether what you read is false or true? To be taught to write or to speak—but what is the use of...

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.

Occult Theft,–Theft which hides itself even from itself, and is legal, respectable, and cowardly,–corrupts the body and soul of man, to the last fibre of them. And the guilty Thieves of Europe, the real sources...

Education does not mean teaching people what they do not know. It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small parcel.

Let us then understand at once that change or variety is as much a necessity to the human heart and brain in buildings as in books; that there is no merit, though there is some...

The highest reward for man’s toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it.

And observe, you are put to stern choice in this matter. You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work...

To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality.

You can only possess beauty through understanding it.

It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little. Whenyou pay too much, you lose a little money – that’s all. When you paytoo little, you sometimes lose everything, because the...

No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change; and to banish imperfection...

. . . no good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art. . . . no great man ever stops...

Cookery means…English thoroughness, French art, and Arabian hospitality; it means the knowledge of all fruits and herbs and balms and spices; it means carefulness, inventiveness, and watchfulness.

It is better to lose your pride with someone you love rather than to lose that someone you love with your useless pride.

All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hours, and the books of all Time.

There is no wealth but life.

No changing of place at a hundred miles an hour will make us one whit stronger, or happier, or wiser. There was always more in the world than man could see, walked they ever so...

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless.

All great art is praise.

There is no music in a rest, but there is the making of music in it. In our whole life-melody the music is broken off here and there by “rests,” and we foolishly think we...

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

He who has truth at his heart need never fear the want of persuasion on his tongue.

the only prospect which is really desirable or delightful, is that from the window of the breakfast-room […] where we meet the first light of the dewy day, the first breath of the morning air,...

It is evident that the chief feeling induced by woody country is one of reverence for its antiquity. There is a quiet melancholy about the decay of the patriarchal trunks, which is enhanced by the...

I believe that the first test of a great man is his humility. I don’t mean by humility, doubt of his power. But really great men have a curious feeling that the greatness is not...

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

Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.

And whether consciously or not, you must be in many a heart enthroned: queens you must always be: queens to your lovers; queens to your husbands and sons; queens of higher mystery to the world...

To be content in utter darkness and ignorance is indeed unmanly, and therefore we think that to love light and find knowledge must always be right. Yet wherever pride has any share in the work,...

Modern science gives lectures on botany, to show there is no such thing as a flower; on humanity, to show there is no such thing as a man; and on theology, to show there is...

The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and what it saw in a plain way. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion–all in one.

Reading and writing are not education if they do not help people to be kind to all creatures

Taste is not only a part and index of morality, it is the only morality. The first, and last, and closest trial question to any living creature is “What do you like?” Tell me what...

If only the Geologists would let me alone, I could do very well, but those dreadful Hammers! I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses