“Some people's lives are like that; they progress by harmony rather than movement.”

Comparing a life of inward harmony to larks descending upon their song · Gathered Leaves, letters and diaries, 1892

• Music
• Truth

“How many a born king spends his whole life in the pursuit of asses for want of some kind prophet to tell him he is a head and shoulders taller than other people.”

On wasted gifts and the need to recognise one's true stature · Gathered Leaves, letters and diaries, 1890

• Fame
• Truth

“How far away we are from each other. Two walls of flesh between me and the nearest person on earth.”

Expressing the loneliness that persists even within intimacy · Gathered Leaves, letters and diaries, 1889

• Love
• Solitude

“People who are always in the mood for Duty make Saints, and people who are often in the mood for it, Heroes.”

A wry distinction between habitual goodness and repeated courage · Gathered Leaves, letters and diaries, 1889

• Faith
• Truth

“It seems to me nothing should be done, when you are not in the mood for it, except Duty.”

Separating genuine inclination from obligations that must still be met · Gathered Leaves, letters and diaries, 1889

• Truth

“We give more truth to those we hate than to those we love.”

Suggesting that affection can make us conceal parts of ourselves · Gathered Leaves, letters and diaries, 1888

• Love
• Truth

“There is delightful freemasonry in a fog. Ignorant people will always help each other. Half knowledge is very communicable; not so knowledge.”

A witty observation on uncertainty, fellowship and the limits of knowledge · Gathered Leaves, letters and diaries, 1888

• Friendship
• Truth

“Nature is ever economical, and souls are her very dearest commodity.”

A playful reflection on the singular value of individual souls · Gathered Leaves, letters and diaries, 1888

• Mortality
• Nature

“To love a river is to love poetry in one of its most visible forms.”

Treating landscape as poetry made tangible · Gathered Leaves, letters and diaries, 1888

• Nature
• Poetry

“Why are a man's words bound to be true, when half his deeds at least are sure to be false?”

Questioning the easy assumption that speech reveals character more faithfully than action · Gathered Leaves, letters and diaries, 1888

• Truth

“Solitude affects some people like wine. They must not take too much of it. It flies to the head, and they become intoxicated.”

A vivid warning about the intoxicating effects of too much isolation · Gathered Leaves, letters and diaries, 1888

• Solitude
• Truth

“It was delightful to hear of your looking out at the stars for sympathy when you felt low, and getting better directly; they have so often comforted me.”

On the quiet consolation she found in the stars · Gathered Leaves, letters and diaries, 1886

• Hope
• Nature

“It is like a little ray of candle-light by which darkness becomes visible. But the joy of love is sunshine.”

Contrasting the faint light of intellect with the fullness of love · Gathered Leaves, letters and diaries, 1886

• Joy
• Love

“They err who say that without love is no joy. There is a joy of the intellect with which the heart has nothing to do.”

Distinguishing intellectual delight from the deeper warmth of love · Gathered Leaves, letters and diaries, 1886

• Joy
• Love

“Political writing, of either side of the question, is of little service to the entertainment or instruction of the reader. Abuse and scurrillity are generally the chief figures in the language of party.”

A sceptical judgement on partisan writing and its tendency towards abuse · Prose satire, Memoirs of a Sad Dog

• Art
• Truth

“When an author resolves to think himself in the right, it is more than human argument can do to convince him he is in the wrong.”

A durable joke about authorial certainty and resistance to correction · Prose satire, Memoirs of a Sad Dog

• Art
• Truth

“This vanity of surviving our dust by lasting monuments of national gratitude, has prompted men to the most noble actions.”

A sharp observation on fame, mortality and the motive power of remembrance · Essay, On the Origin, Nature, and Design of Sculpture

• Fame
• Memory
• Mortality

“Heroes, patriots, and statesmen, are not only entitled to the love and veneration of their cotemporaries during their lives, but their virtues and services ought to be transmitted to the latest posterity.”

He argues that public art should carry worthy lives into collective memory · Essay, On the Origin, Nature, and Design of Sculpture

• Art
• Fame
• Memory

“The Gothic sculpture sprung afterwards from a wild imagination, unassisted by nature.”

A revealing judgement on the relationship between imagination and nature · Essay, On the Origin, Nature, and Design of Sculpture

• Art
• Nature

“Sculpture is an art which, by design and solid matter, imitates the palpable objects of nature.”

A compact definition of sculpture as imitation made tangible · Essay, On the Origin, Nature, and Design of Sculpture

• Art
• Nature

“God had sent His creatures into the world with arms long enough to reach anything, if they would be at the trouble of extending them.”

An early recollection of his fierce belief in effort and self-reliance · Reported maxim, preserved in Croft's Love and Madness

• Hope
• Truth

“I have sent twice for a copy of the MSs – no answer from you – an explanation or excuse for your silence would oblige.”

An impatient demand for both his papers and an explanation · Letter to Horace Walpole, 24 July 1769

• Fame
• Truth

“I think myself injured Sir & did not you know my circumstances you would not dare to treat me thus.”

A defiant protest against what he regarded as condescension and neglect · Letter to Horace Walpole, 24 July 1769

• Fame
• Truth

“I can not reconcile your behavior to me, with the notion I once entertained of you.”

A direct expression of disappointment in a hoped-for literary patron · Letter to Horace Walpole, 24 July 1769

• Friendship
• Truth