The superiority of the Greeks seems not so much the result of climate and society, as of the simplicity of their end and the uniformity of their means.

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.

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.

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.

If you lose today, win tomorrow. In this never-ending spirit of challenge is found the heart of a victor.

'Glee' found me. I didn't really go looking for it.

If my husband ever met a woman on the street who looked like one of his paintings he would faint.

God promised to make you free. He never promised to make you independent.

Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell; and George the Third — ['Treason!' cried the Speaker] — may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it.

If you are worried about what others might think and about how your position in the group might be jeopardized, then you will never really create anything.

Time apparently did nothing but blunt grief’s sharpest edge so that it hacked rather than sliced.

Anytime we drag our past into the future, we have some grieving to do. When we refuse to grieve, we hang on to the weight of life that slows us down and robs us from finding our lives.

Yes, the words of the Mother can be heard as clearly as we hear one another. But one requires a fine nerve to hear Mother's words.