“Why assume that to look is to see?”

“Today we haven't the heart to expel the painters and poets from society because we refuse to admit to ourselves that there is any danger in keeping them in our midst.”

“For a long time I limited myself to one colour - as a form of discipline.”

“All things considered, there is only Matisse.”

“If everybody is looking for it, then nobody is finding it. If we were cultured, we would not be conscious of lacking culture. We would regard it as something natural and would not make so much fuss about it. And if we knew the real value of this word we would be cultured enough not to give it so much importance.”

“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”

“The Good Spirit never cared for the colleges, and though all men and boys were now drilled in Greek, Latin, and Mathematics, it had quite left these shells high on the beach, and was creating and feeding other matters [science] at other ends of the world.”

“Nature is a rag-merchant, who works up every shred and ort and end into new creations; like a good chemist, whom I found, the other day, in his laboratory, converting his old shirts into pure white sugar.”

“It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion.”

“A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts; but as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own.”

“Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.”

“Come, Lady, die to live.”

“Love is heavy and light, bright and dark, hot and cold, sick and healthy, asleep and awake- its everything except what it is! (Act 1, scene 1)”

“With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage.”

“The house praises the carpenter.”

“If a man knows the law, find out, though he live in a pine shanty, and resort to him. And if a man can pipe or sing, so as to wrap the imprisoned soul in an elysium; or can paint a landscape, and convey into souls and ochres all the enchantments of Spring or Autumn; or can liberate and intoxicate all people who hear him with delicious songs and verses; it is certain that the secret cannot be kept; the first witness tells it to a second, and men go by fives and tens and fifties to his doors.”

“Every heroic act measures itself by its contempt of some external good. But it finds its own success at last, and then the prudent also extol.”

“The breach of customIs breach of all.”

“Liberty plucks justice by the nose; The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart Goes all decorum.”

“What is the city but the people?”

“Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.”

“You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my life.”

“Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.”