Nature does more than supply materials; she also supplies powers. [ J. S. Mill ]
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours. [ John Locke ]
Human wisdom is the aggregate of all human experience, constantly accumulating and selecting and reorganizing its own materials. [ Judge Joseph Story ]
Style in painting is the same as in writing, - a power over materials, whether words or colors, by which conceptions or sentiments are conveyed. [ Sir Joshua Reynolds ]
Genius is nothing more than our common faculties refined to a greater intensity. There are no astonishing ways of doing astonishing things. All astonishing things are done by ordinary materials. [ B. R. Haydon ]
There is so little to redeem the dry mass of follies and errors from which the materials of this life are composed that anything to love or to reverence becomes, as it were, the Sabbath for the mind. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
All the means of action, the shapeless masses - the materials - lie everywhere about us. What we need is the celestial fire to change the flint into transparent crystal, bright and clear. That fire is genius! [ Longfellow ]
An artist that works in marble or colors has them all to himself and his tribe: but the man who moulds his thoughts in verse has to employ the materials vulgarized by everybody's use, and glorify them by his handling. [ O. W. Holmes ]
Of all the species of literary composition, perhaps biography is the most delightful. The attention concentrated on one individual gives a unity to the materials of which it is composed, which is wanting in general history. [ Robert Hall ]
Experience: in that all our knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation employed either about external or sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking. [ John Locke ]
They that have read about everything are thought to understand everything too; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with the materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections, - we must I chew them over again. [ Channing ]
Hair is the most delicate and lasting of our materials, and survives us, like love. It is so light, so gentle, so escaping from the idea of death, that, with a lock of hair belonging to a child or friend, we may almost look up to heaven and compare notes with the angelic nature, - may almost say, I have a piece of thee here not unworthy of thy being now.
[ Leigh Hunt ]
Business is religion, and religion is business. The man who does not make a business of his religion has a religious life of no force, and the man who does not make a religion of his business has a business life of no character.
The world is God's workshop; the raw materials are His; the ideals and patterns are His; our hands are "the members of Christ," our reward His recognition. Blacksmith or banker, draughtsman or doctor, painter or preacher, servant or statesman, must work as unto the Lord, not merely making a living, but devoting a life. This makes life sacramental, turning its water into wine. This is twice blessed, blessing both the worker and the work. [ Maltbie Babcock ]