Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse.
The wonder of a single snowflake outweighs the wisdom of a million meteorologists.
Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses.
He that cannot possibly mend his own case will do what he can to impair another's.
Those that want friends to open themselves unto are cannibals of their own hearts.
When I paint I am ageless, I just have the pleasure or the difficulty of painting.
Certainty is the mother of repose, and therefore the common law aims at certainty.
Fortitude is the marshal of thought, the armor of the will, and the fort of reason.
The lame man who keeps the right road outstrips the runner who takes the wrong one.
Who then to frail mortality shall trust But limns the water, or but writes in dust.
Suspicion amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they never fly by twilight.
Death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home.
Look to make your course regular, that men may know beforehand what they may expect.
As is the garden such is the gardener. A man's nature runs either to herbs or weeds.
God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.
Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God.
It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear.
A just fear of an imminent danger, though be no blow given, is a lawful cause of war.
A sudden bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open.
Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New.
One of the fathers saith . . . that old men go to death, and death comes to young men.
I loathe my own face, and I've done self-portraits because I've had nobody else to do.
We think according to nature. We speak according to rules. We act according to custom.
If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.
People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can't fool the neighbors.
God never wrought miracles to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it.
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience.
The best preservative to keep the mind in health is the faithful admonition of a friend.
I'm just trying to make images as accurately as possible off my nervous system as I can.
There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious.
Journeys at youth are part of the education; but at maturity, are part of the experience.
He that plots to be the only figure among ciphers [zeros], is the decay of the whole age.
It's always hopeless to talk about painting - one never does anything but talk around it.
It is a secret both in nature and state, that it is safer to change many things than one.
The bee enclosed and through the amber shown Seems buried in the juice which was his own.
Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.
Learning teaches how to carry things in suspense, without prejudice, till you resolve it.
It's such an extraordinary supple medium that you never do quite know what paint will do.
There arises from a bad and unapt formation of words a wonderful obstruction to the mind.
The greatest vicissitude of things amongst men, is the vicissitude of sects and religions.
I always think of myself not so much as a painter but as a medium for accident and chance.
What, then, remains but that we still should cry, For being born, and, being born, to die?
All authority must be out of a man's self, turned . . . either upon an art, or upon a man.
Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.
Knowledge is a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate.
The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.
Of great wealth there is no real use, except in its distribution, the rest is just conceit.
Dreams, and predictions of astrology....ought to serve but for winter talk by the fireside.
Friendship maketh daylight in the understanding, out of darkness and confusion of thoughts.