Feathers shall raise men even as they do birds towards heaven :- That is by letters written with their quills.
In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.
Music... is the shaping of the invisible.
Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.
He who thinks little errs much.
Small rooms or dwellings set the mind in the right path, large ones cause it to go astray.
Nature is constrained by the cause of her laws which dwell inborn in her. Variant: Nature is constrained by the order of her own law which lives and works within her.
Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?
The variety of colour in objects cannot be discerned at a great distance, excepting in those parts which are directly lighted up by the solar rays.
The limiting surface of one thing is the beginning of another.
When you are alone you are all your own.
A painter was asked why, since he made such beautiful figures, which were but dead things, his children were so ugly; to which the painter replied that he made his pictures by day, and his children by night.
An artist's studio should be a small space because small rooms discipline the mind and large ones distract it.
If you are representing a white body let it be surrounded by ample space, because as white has no colour of its own, it is tinged and altered in some degree by the colour of the objects surrounding it
Fear arises sooner than anything else.
Who would believe that so small a space could contain the images of all the universe?
Necessity is a guardian in Nature.
As you cannot do what you want, Want what you can do
The painter who has no doubt about his own ability will attain very little.
There are many kinds of beauty as people who possess it.
Look at light and admire its beauty. Close your eyes, and then look again: what you saw is no longer there; and what you will see later is not yet.
And you who wish to represent by words the form of man and all the aspects of his membrification, relinquish that idea. For the more minutely you describe the more you will confine the mind of the reader, and the more you will keep him from the knowledge of the thing described. And so it is necessary to draw and to describe.
The first object of the painter is to make a flat plane appear as a body in relief and projecting from that plane
The study of what is excellent is food for the mind and body.
Supreme happiness will be the greatest cause of misery, and the perfection of wisdom the occassion of folly.
We ought not to desire the impossible.
Nothing is so much to be feared as Evil Report.
Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.
Oysters open completely when the moon is full; and when the crab sees one it throws a piece of stone or seaweed into it and the oyster cannot close again so that it serves the crab for meat. Such is the fate of him who opens his mouth too much and thereby puts himself at the mercy of the listener.
Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.
Movement will fail sooner than usefulness.
How many emperors and how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and they only sought to gain dominions and riches in order that their fame might be ever-lasting.
I would venture to affirm that a man cannot attain excellence if he satisfy the ignorant and not those of his own craft, and if he be not 'singular' or 'distant,' or whatever you like to call him.
Painting is concerned with the ten things you can see: these are darkness and brightness, substance and color, form and place, remoteness and nearness, movement and rest.
Nature alone is the master of true genius.
The greatest geniuses sometimes accomplish more when they work less.
once you have tasted the taste of sky, you will forever look up
The lover is moved by the beloved object as the senses are by sensual objects; and they unite and become one and the same thing. The work is the first thing born of this union; if the thing loved is base the lover becomes base.
Learn diligence before speedy execution.
Our life is made by the death of others.
The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands.
What induces you, oh man, to depart from your home in town, to leave parents and friends, and go to the countryside over mountains and valleys, if it is not for the beauty of the world of nature?
If on your own or by the criticism of others you discover error in your work, correct it then and there; otherwise in exposing your work to the public, you will expose your error also.
In order to arrive at knowledge of the motions of birds in the air, it is first necessary to acquire knowledge of the winds, which we will prove by the motions of water in itself, and this knowledge will be a step enabling us to arrive at the knowledge of beings that fly between the air and the wind.
All the bystanders at an event worthy of note adopt various gestures of admiration when contemplating the occurrence.
In fact, whatever exists in the universe, in essence, in appearance, in the imagination, the painter has first in his mind and then in his hands ... it lies in his power to create them . . .
Experience is a truer guide than the words of others.
Study me, reader, if you delight in me, because on very few occasions shall I return to the world, and because the patience for this profession is found in very few, and only in those who wish to compose things anew. Come, oh men, to see the miracles that such studies will disclose to nature.
The motive power is the cause of all life.
Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.
Every part is disposed to unite with the whole, that it may thereby escape from its own incompleteness.
The memory of benefits is a frail defence against ingratitude.
Men of genius sometimes accomplish most when they work least, for they are thinking out inventions.
How painting surpasses all human works by reason of the subtle possibilities which it contains.
Whoever does not respect life, does not deserve it.
One shall be born from small beginnings which will rapidly become vast. This will respect no created thing, rather will it, by its power, transform almost every thing from its own nature into another.
Truth was always but the daughter of time.
Ogni nostra cognitione prīcipia da sentimēti.All our knowledge has its origin in our preceptions.
It reflects no great honor on a painter to be able to execute only one thing well -- such as a head, an academy figure, or draperies, animals, landscapes, or the like -- in other words, confining himself to some particular object of study. This is so because there is scarcely a person so devoid of genius as to fail of success if he applies himself earnestly to one branch of study and practices it continually.
Depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves.
