We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts.

Our hearts were drunk with a beauty Our eyes could never see.

His works (taken together) are almost like a new edition of human nature.

Art must anchor in nature, or it is the sport of every breath of folly.

I am not, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, a good-natured man; that is, many things annoy me besides what interferes with my own ease and interest. I hate a lie; a piece of injustice wounds me to the quick, though nothing but the report of it reach me. Therefore I have made many enemies and few friends; for the public know nothing of well-wishers, and keep a wary eye on those who would reform them.

The humblest painter is a true scholar; and the best of scholars the scholar of nature.