All actions and attitudes of children are graceful because they are the luxuriant and immediate offspring of the moment - divested of affectation and free from all pretense.

Nature is a collective idea, and, though its essence exist in each individual of the species, can never in its perfection inhabit a single object.

Emulation embalms the dead; envy, the vampire, blasts the living.

Expression alone can invest beauty with supreme and lasting command over the eye.

Indiscriminate pursuit of perfection infallibly leads to mediocrity.

Art, like love, excludes all competition and absorbs the man.

Art among a religious race produces reliques [sic]; among a military one, trophies; among a commercial one, articles of trade.

The price of excellence is labor, and time that of immortality.

Ancient art was the tyrant of Egypt, the mistress of Greece and the servant of Rome.

Life is rapid, art is slow, occasion coy, practice fallacious, and judgment partial.

Heaven and earth, advantages and obstacles, conspire to educate genius.

Change brings opportunity.

Those cloudy nights when the stars fail to appear, I miss them terribly. But I know in my heart they are still there and, sometimes knowing has to be enough

Communication is a continual balancing act, juggling the conflicting needs for intimacy and independence

We're all generous, but with different things, like time, money, talent - criticism.

There are three great themes in science in the twentieth century : the atom, the computer, and the gene.

The dreariest spot in all the land to Death they set apart; with scanty grace from Nature's hand, and none from that of Art.

Write 10 times: 'Fear is my friend. Fear is the energy to do my best in a new situation.' You don't have to believe it; just write it.

I guess I can be a little neurotic sometimes, but can't everybody?

Be a scientist, save the world.

No, my step-daughter just opened a theatre school for children, I have another daughter who works in the record industry and another who is going back to collage and I have two little ones at home.