All art is but dirtying the paper delicately.

To speak and act truth with constancy and precision is nearly as difficult, and perhaps as meretorious, as to speak it under intimidation or penalty

you never will love art well, till you love what she mirrors better

to some of the best and wisest artists among ourselves, it may not be always possible to explain what pretty things they are making … the very perfection of their art is in their knowing so little about it

It does not much matter that an individual loses two or three hundred pounds in buying a bad picture, but it is to be regretted that a nation should lose two or three hundred thousand in raising a ridiculous building.

The art of nations is to be accumulative, just as science and history are; the work of living men not superseding, but building itself upon the work of the past.

Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality

Life without industry is guilt. Industry without Art is Brutality.

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others; but of the three, the only quite trustworthy one is the last. The acts of a nation may be triumphant by its good fortune; and its words mighty by the genius of a few of its children: but its art, only by the general gifts and common sympathies of the race.