They say that truth is naked. I cannot admit this for any but abstract truths; in the arts, all truths are produced by methods which show the hand of… - Eugène Delacroix

Nature is just a dictionary, you hunt in it for words.. ..you find in it the elements which make a phrase or a story; but nobody would regard a dictionary as a composition in the poetic sense of the term. Besides, nature is far from being always interesting from the point of view of the effect of the whole.. .If each detail is perfect in some way, the union of these details seldom gives an effect equivalent to that which arises, in the work of a great artist, from the total composition.

Human beings are so strangely constructed that they often find consolation and even happiness in misfortune (for instance, when ones is unjustly persecuted, the comfort of knowing that one deserves a better fate), but it far more happens that a man will be bored by prosperity and even think himself supremely miserable (19 July 1854).

He is like everyone else, a compound of strange and inexplicable contrasts, and this is what the writers of novels and plays will never understand; they make their characters all of a piece. But people are not like that. There may be ten different people in one man, and sometimes all ten appear within a single hour (Wednesday 7 December 1853).