“The strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it.”
“Large fortunes are all founded either on the occupation of land, or lending or the taxation of labor.”
“Doing is the great thing, for if people resolutely do what is right, they come in time to like doing it.”
“It is far better to give work that is above a person, than to educate the person to be above their work.”
“Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.”
“You may either win your peace or buy it: win it, by resistance to evil; buy it, by compromise with evil.”
“Government and cooperation are in all things the laws of life. Anarchy and competition, the laws of death.”
“How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?”
“Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies, for instance.”
“The common practice of keeping up appearances with society is a mere selfish struggle of the vain with the vain.”
“Every great man is always being helped by everybody; for his gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.”
“Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.”
“It does not matter what the whip is; it is none the less a whip, because you have cut thongs for it out of your own souls.”
“People are eternally divided into two classes, the believer, builder, and praiser, and the unbeliever, destroyer and critic.”
“No person who is well bred, kind and modest is ever offensively plain; all real deformity means want for manners or of heart.”
“Nearly all the evils in the Church have arisen from bishops desiring power more than light. They want authority, not outlook.”
“Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.”
“No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.”
“No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.”
“No one can become rich by the efforts of only their toil, but only by the discovery of some method of taxing the labor of others.”
“No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.”
“The beginning and almost the end of all good law is that everyone shall work for their bread and receive good bread for their work.”
“Out of suffering comes the serious mind; out of salvation, the grateful heart; out of endurance, fortitude; out of deliverance faith.”
“Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts -- the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.”
“What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.”
“It is advisable that a person know at least three things, where they are, where they are going, and what they had best do under the circumstances.”
“If a great thing can be done, it can be done easily, but this ease is like the of ease of a tree blossoming after long years of gathering strength.”
“In old times men used their powers of painting to show the objects of faith, in later times they use the objects of faith to show their powers of painting.”
“It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all that he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his readers is sure to skip them.”
“Summer is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces up, snow is exhilarating; there is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.”