To try to live in posterity is to be like an actor who leaps over the footlights and talks to the orchestra. - Samuel Butler

One reason why it is as well not to give very much detail is that, no matter how much is given, the eye will always want more; it will know very well that it is not being paid in full. On the other hand, no matter how little one gives, the eye will generally compromise by wanting only a little more. In either case the eye will want more, so one may as well stop sooner or later. Sensible painting, like sensible law, sensible writing, or sensible anything else, consists as much in knowing what to omit as what to insist upon.

We are not won by arguments that we can analyse, but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.

To himself every one is an immortal: he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.