One should always be desiring or hoping for something. When one can hope for that which one desires, one enjoys the greatest happiness of which our t… - Eugène Delacroix

Perfect beauty implies perfect simplicity, a quality that at first sight does not arouse the emotions which we feel before gigantic works, objects whose very disproportion constitutes an element of beauty.

Moralists and philosophers (I mean true philosophers like Marcus Aurelius and Jesus Christ) never talked politics, they considered their subject only from the human standpoint. Equal rights and other such vain imaginings were not their concern; all that they enjoined upon mankind was resignation to fate...to the constant need to submit to the harsh decrees of nature- a need which no one can deny and no philanthropist can overcome. They asked nothing more of the sage than that he conform to the laws of nature and play his part in his appointed place amidst a general harmony. Illness, death, poverty, spiritual suffering, these are with us always and will torment us under any form of government; democracy or monarchy, it makes no odds. (20 February 1847)

…the outcome of my days is always the same; an infinite desire for what one never gets; a void one cannot fill; an utter yearning to produce in all ways, to battle against time that drags us along, and the distractions that throw a veil over our soul…….one works not only to produce art but to give value to time…. — Eugène Delacroix (1798 -1863)