You are never to lose sight of nature; the instant you do, you are all abroad, at the mercy of every gust of fashion, without knowing or seeing the point to which you ought to steer.

There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.

The real character of a man is found out by his amusements.

Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own teachers.

A room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts.

Our Exhibitions [The Royal Academy] have... a mischievous tendency, by seducing the Painter to an ambition of pleasing indiscriminately the mixed multitude of people who resort to them.

Art in its perfection is not ostentatious; it lies hid and works its effect, itself unseen.

The great end of all arts is to make an impression on the imagination and the feeling. The imitation of nature frequently does this. Sometimes it fails and something else succeeds.

A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great.

Taste depends upon those finer emotions which make the organization of the soul.

Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellences which are put of the reach of the rules of art: a power which no precepts can teach, and which no industry can acquire.

The final reward of the dead - to die no more

The toughest competition you can ever face is between you and your emotion.would you get the best of it or let it get the best of you

Constellations of thought hard wired to the universal energies between us resonate as a familiar hum that gently vibrates to caress my soul.

Here is the truth: The Earth is round; Saddam Hussein did not attack us on 9/11; Elvis is dead; Obama was born in the United States; and the climate crisis is real.

I don't think anyone ever gets over the surprise of how differently one audience's reaction is from another.

However, I think the major opposition to ecology has deeper roots than mere economics; ecology threatens widely held values so fundamental that they must be called religious.

Each blade of grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together with his life.

I wish I could have won a lot more tournaments, but I got injured every time I played well.

The work of preservation demands that the feelings playing about in one's guts not be turned into action. Just watch their passing like cherry blossoms.

This valley is the only place that comes up to the brag about it, and exceeds it.