When the proportions are too perfect it detracts from a sense of the sublime. (13 January 1857) - Eugène Delacroix

Les artistes qui cherchent la perfection en tout sont ceux qui ne peuvent l'atteindre en aucune partie.

Poor deluded people, there will be no happiness for you in release from work! See these idle loafers who seem overburdened with the weight of time and have no idea what to do with their leisure which these machines will increase still further. In other times, travelling was a distraction for them, it took them out of their usual rut; they saw new countries and new customs…Nowadays they are carried so swiftly from place to place that they have no time to see anything; they mark off the stages of their journeys by names of railway stations which look exactly alike, and when they’ve crossed the whole of Europe they feel as though they have never left these dull stations which appear to follow them everywhere, like their own idleness and incapacity for enjoyment. It will not be long before they discover that the costumes and strange customs which they crossed the earth to see are the same all over the world. (6 June 1855).

Before you begin, study unceasingly, but once started, make mistakes if you must but you must execute freely (12 May 1855).