Nature Did All Things Well

As When, O Lady Mine, With Chiselled Touch, The Stone Unhewn And Cold, Becomes A Living Mould, The More The Marble Wastes, The More The Statue Grows.

The Greatest Artist Has No Conception Which A Single Block Of White Marble Does Not Potentially Contain Within Its Mass, But Only A Hand Obedient To The Mind Can Penetrate To This Image.

Painters Are Not In Any Way Unsociable Through Pride, But Either Because They Find Few Pursuits Equal To Painting, Or In Order Not To Corrupt Themselves With The Useless Conversation Of Idle People, And Debase The Intellect From The Lofty Imaginations In Which They Are Always Absorbed.

A Man Paints With His Brains And Not With His Hands.

The Best Of Artists Hath No Thought To Show Which The Rough Stone In Its Superfluous Shell Doth Not Include; To Break The Marble Spell Is All The Hand That Serves The Brain Can Do.