“I decline to present the artist to the notice of the public as a grown-up child, or as a strange, unaccountable, moon-stricken person, waiting helplessly in the street of life.”

Rejecting the stereotype of artists as helpless or impractical · Speech, Artists' General Benevolent Institution, London, 29 March 1862

• Art
• Dignity

“I therefore exhort you to persevere in a thorough determination to do whatever you have to do as well as you can do it.”

Urging wholehearted effort in whatever work life requires · Letter to Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, 1868

• Hope
• Truth

“I came here in an open, honest, and confiding spirit, if ever man did, and because I felt a deep sympathy in your land; had I felt otherwise, I should have kept away.”

Describing openness and sympathy as the basis of genuine encounter · Speech, New York, 18 February 1842

• Friendship
• Truth