Echoes

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

The best of artists has no conception that a single block of marble does not contain within itself, beneath its surface; only the hand that obeys the intellect can reach it.

The imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.

Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space.

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.

You will hear every day the maxims of a low prudence. You will hear, that the first duty is to get land and money, place and name. "What is this Truth you seek? What is this Beauty?" men will ask, with derision. If, nevertheless, God have called any of you to explore truth and beauty, be bold, be firm, be true. When you shall say, "As others do, so will I. I renounce, I am sorry for it, my early visions; I must eat the good of the land, and let learning and romantic expectations go, until a more convenient season." — then dies the man in you; then once more perish the buds of art, and poetry, and science, as they have died already in a thousand thousand men. The hour of that choice is the crisis of your history; and see that you hold yourself fast by the intellect. ... Bend to the persuasion which is flowing to you from every object in Nature, to be its tongue to the heart of man, and to show the besotted world how passing fair is wisdom.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

Human subtlety...will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

The creator gives no heed to the critic unless he becomes a barren inventor.

He plants trees whose shade another age will enjoy.

It is far from easy to determine whether Nature has proved to man a kind parent or a merciless stepmother.

I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death.

If anything is sacred the human body is sacred.

Nature is to be found in her entirety nowhere more than in her smallest creatures.

Prize that which is best in the universe; and this is that which useth everything and ordereth everything.

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

From the heights of these pyramids, forty centuries look down on us.

You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean, in a drop.

For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man?