Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.

Nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn.

A graceful and pleasing figure is a perpetual letter of recommendation.

A man that is young in years may be old in hours if he have lost no time.

None of the affections have been noted to fascinate and bewitch but envy.

Cleanness of body was ever deemed to proceed from a due reverence to God.

There is little friendship in the world, and least of all between equals.

An artist must learn to be nourished by his passions and by his despairs.

The surest way to prevent seditions...is to take away the matter of them.

Truth can never be reached by just listening to the voice of an authority.

In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.

In nature things move violently to their place, and calmly in their place.

Many secrets of art and nature are thought by the unlearned to be magical.

The ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding.

Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.

It is the wisdom of the crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour.

No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.

Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us.

I work for posterity, these things requiring ages for their accomplishment.

A little science estranges a man from God; a lot of science brings him back.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

There is a cunning which we in England call the rning of the cat in the pan.

A bachelor's life is a fine breakfast, a flat lunch, and a miserable dinner.

There are many wise men that have secret hearts and transparent countenances.

It is a great happiness when men's professions and their inclinations accord.

The genius, wit, and the spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs.

The virtue of prosperity is temperance; the virtue of adversity is fortitude.

I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.

The sun, though it passes through dirty places, yet remains as pure as before.

That which above all other yields the sweetest smell in the air is the violet.

Painting is the pattern of one's own nervous system being projected on canvas.

If I sit and daydream, the images rush by like a succession of colored slides.

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

The only really interesting thing is what happens between two people in a room.

Laws and Institutions Must Go Hand in Hand with the Progress of the Human Mind.

Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.

Photographs are not only points of reference... they're often triggers of ideas.

The French are wiser than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are.

Virtue is like precious odours,-most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.

Nothing is to be feared but fear itself. Nothing grievous but to yield to grief.

I regret not starting to paint earlier...It is one of the few things I do regret.

Excusations, cessions, modesty itself well governed, are but arts of ostentation.

I would like, in my arbitrary way, to bring one nearer to the actual human being.

There is no greater wisdom than well to time the beginnings and onsets of things.

The momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.

Many a man's strength is in opposition, and when he faileth, he grows out of use.

Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses.

The wonder of a single snowflake outweighs the wisdom of a million meteorologists.

Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse.

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