The new school of art and thought does indeed wear an air of audacity, and breaks out everywhere into blasphemies, as if it required any courage to say a blasphemy. There is only one thing that it requires real courage to say, and that is a truism.
Unless you know the mountains and the forests, the defiles and impasses, the lay of the marshes and swamps, you cannot maneuver with an armed force. Unless you use local guides, you cannot get the advantages of the land.
The sculptor, the painter the musician the dancer, or any artist, if he can first obtain celebrate in Paris, acquires very easily the esteem and eulogy of other countries.
The art of conversation, or the qualification for a good companion, is a certain self-control, which now holds the subject, now lets it go, with a respect for the emergencies of the moment.
If you are situated at a great distance from the enemy, and the strength of the two armies is equal, it is not easy to provoke a battle, and fighting will be to your disadvantage.
Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is a great matter. Art is an organ of human life, transmitting man's reasonable perception into feeling.
I see thou art implacable, more deaf
To pray'rs than winds and seas. Yet winds to seas
Are reconcil'd at length, and sea to shore:
Thy anger, unappeasable, still rages
Eternal tempest never to be calm'd.
We have learned to whittle the Eden Tree to the shape of a surplice peg, We have learned to bottle our parents twain in the yelk of an addled egg. We know that the tail must wag the dog, for the horse is drawn by the cart, But the devil whoops, as he whooped of old; It's clever, but is it art?
Laying out grounds... may be considered as a liberal art, in some sort like poetry and painting.... it is to assist Nature in moving the affections... the affections of those who have the deepest perception of the beauty of Nature.
And when he is obliged to take the life of any one, to do so when there is a proper justification and manifest reason for it; but above all he must abstain from taking the property of others, for men forget more easily the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony.