Nothing About Me Surprises Me.

Wisdom Is That Apprehension Of Heavenly Things To Which The Spirit Rises Through Love.

[raphael's] Great Superiority Is Due To The Instinctive Sense Which, In Him, Seems To Desire To Shatter Form. Form Is, In His Figures, What It Is In Ourselves, An Interpreter For The Communication Of Ideas And Sensations, An Exhaustless Source Of Poetic Inspiration. Every Figure Is A World In Itself, A Portrait Of Which The Original Appeared In A Sublime Vision, In A Flood Of Light, Pointed To By An Inward Voice, Laid Bare By A Divine Finger Which Showed What The Sources Of Expression Had Been In The Whole Past Life Of The Subject.

Art's Greatest Efforts Are Invariably A Timid Counterfeit Of Nature.

Rich Men Are Resolved To Be Astonished At Nothing. When They See A Masterpiece, They Must Needs At One Glance Recognize Some Flaw To Dispense Them From Admiration, A Vulgar Emotion.

If The Artist Does Not Fling Himself, Without Reflecting, Into His Work, As Curtis Flung Himself Into The Yawning Gulf, As The Soldier Flings Himself Into The Enemy's Trenches, And If, Once In This Crater, He Does Not Work Like A Miner On Whom The Walls Of His Gallery Have Fallen In; If He Contemplates Difficulties Instead Of Overcoming Them One By One ... He Is Simply Looking On At The Suicide Of His Own Talent.