If deceiving the eye were the only business of the art... the minute painter would be more apt to succeed. But it is not the eye, it is the mind which the painter of genius desires to address.

There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.

The real character of a man is found out by his amusements.

Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own teachers.

A room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts.

Our Exhibitions [The Royal Academy] have... a mischievous tendency, by seducing the Painter to an ambition of pleasing indiscriminately the mixed multitude of people who resort to them.

Art in its perfection is not ostentatious; it lies hid and works its effect, itself unseen.

The great end of all arts is to make an impression on the imagination and the feeling. The imitation of nature frequently does this. Sometimes it fails and something else succeeds.

A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great.

Taste depends upon those finer emotions which make the organization of the soul.

Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellences which are put of the reach of the rules of art: a power which no precepts can teach, and which no industry can acquire.

Think More Not Less.

shall we dance into the perpetual torture of our union once more?

Faith is believing what we cannot prove.

The continual looking forward to the eternal world is not a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do.

Alas! for love, if thou art all, And nought beyond, O earth.

The happiest man on earth would be able to use the Mirror of Erised like a normal mirror, that is, he would look into it and see himself exactly as he is. Does that help?

If it's free, it's advice; if you pay for it, it's counseling; if you can use either one, it's a miracle.

Psychedelics are actually a kind of miraculous reality that can stand the test of objective examination.

Part of the particular interest and beauty of science fiction and fantasy: writer and reader collaborate in world-making.

On the issue of abortion, I'm ever on the fence, or, at most, an inch or two to either side.