“Th' adorning thee with so much art
Is but a barb'rous skill;
'T is like the pois'ning of a dart,
Too apt before to kill.”

"Would you like to see a little of it?" said the Mock Turtle. (3 April 2010)
Unfit for Mass Consumption (blog entries), 2010
Context: Could anything be more inimical to art than a fear of emotion, or a fear of "excessive" emotion, or a reluctance to express emotion around others? No, of course not. Art can even best the weights of utter fucking ignorance and totalitarian repression, but it cannot survive emotional constipation.
I want a T-shirt that says, "Art is Emo." We live in an age where people are more apt to believe a thing if they read it on a T-shirt.

Variant: Thou art coming to a King,
large petitions with thee bring,
for His grace and pow'r are such
none can ever ask too much.

The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara (1570)
Context: There is (gentle reader) nothing (the works of God only set apart) which so much beautifies and adorns the soul and mind of man as does knowledge of the good arts and sciences. Many arts there are which beautify the mind of man; but of all none do more garnish and beautify it than those arts which are called mathematical, unto the knowledge of which no man can attain, without perfect knowledge and instruction of the principles, grounds, and Elements of Geometry.

Epistle to James Smith.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 94.

Source: Max

Self-Question, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Source: The Pact

Source: World of the Five Gods series, The Curse of Chalion (2000)