That all you got, Bert?” said Mary Poppins, and she said it so brightly you could hardly tell she was disappointed at all. “That’s the lot,” he said. “Business is bad today. You’d think anybody’d be glad to pay to see that, wouldn’t you?” And he nodded his head at Queen Elizabeth. “Well — that’s how it is, Mary,” he sighed. “Can’t take you to tea today, I’m afraid.” Mary Poppins thought of the raspberry-jam-cakes they always had on her Day Out, and she was just going to sigh, when she saw the Match-Man’s face. So, very cleverly, she turned the sigh into a smile — a good one with both ends turned up — and said: “That’s all right, Bert. Don’t you mind. I’d much rather not go to tea. A stodgy meal, I call it — really.” And that, when you think how very much she liked raspberry-jam-cakes, was rather nice of Mary Poppins. The Match-Man apparently thought so, too, for he took her white-gloved hand in his and squeezed it hard. Then together they walked down the row of pictures. “Now, there’s one you’ve never seen before!” said the Match-Man proudly, pointing to a painting of a mountain covered with snow and its slopes simply littered with grasshoppers sitting on gigantic roses. This time Mary Poppins could indulge in a sigh without hurting his feelings. “Oh, Bert,” she said, “that’s a fair treat!” And by the way she said it she made him feel that by rights the picture should have been in the Royal Academy, which is a large room where people hang the pictures they have painted. Everybody comes to see them, and when they have looked at them for a very long time, everybody says to everybody else: “The idea — my dear!” The next picture Mary Poppins and the Match-Man came to was even better. It was the country — all trees and grass and a little bit of blue sea in the distance, and something that looked like Margate in the background. “My word!” said Mary Poppins admiringly, stooping so that she could see it better. “Why, Bert, whatever is the matter?” For the Match-Man had caug

Match quality” is a term economists use to describe the degree of fit between the work someone does and who they are — their abilities and proclivities.

Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise man to be able to sell it.

Man armed with science is like a baby with a box of matches.

...Murder, I have often noticed, is a great matchmaker.

"If we look at the world we see arts for sale. Men use equipment to sell their own selves. As if with the nut and the flower, the nut has become less than the flower. In this kind of Way of strategy, both those teaching and those learning the way are concerned with coloring and showing off their technique, trying to hasten the bloom of the flower. They speak of "This Dojo" and "That Dojo". They are looking for profit."

Find a man whose words paint you a likeness, you have found a man worth something; mark his manner of doing it, as very characteristic of him.

Painting it's a blind man profession. Painter is painting not what he sees but what he feels.

She had found a jewel down inside herself and she had wanted to walk where people could see her and gleam it around. But she had been set in the market-place to sell. Been set for still bait. When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks made them hunt for one another, but the mud is deaf and dumb. Like all the other tumbling mud-balls, Janie had tried to show her shine.

Science is a match that man has just got alight. He thought he was in a room - in moments of devotion, a temple - and that his light would be reflected from and display walls inscribed with wonderful secrets and pillars carved with philosophical systems wrought into harmony. It is a curious sensation, now that the preliminary splutter is over and the flame burns up clear, to see his hands lit and just a glimpse of himself and the patch he stands on visible, and around him, in place of all that human comfort and beauty he anticipated - darkness still.<p>'The Rediscovery of the Unique' <i>Fortnightly Review</i> (1891)</p>

A man’s work reveals him. In social intercourse he gives you the surface that he wishes the world to accept, and you can only gain a true knowledge of him by inferences from little actions, of which he is unconscious, and from fleeting expressions, which cross his face unknown to him. Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem. But in his book or his picture the real man delivers himself defenceless. His pretentiousness will only expose his vacuity. The lathe painted to look like iron is seen to be but a lathe. No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind. To the acute observer no one can produce the most casual work without disclosing the innermost secrets of the soul.

The life of a man is like a game of chess, which he plays according to his art.

A mans manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.

Draftsmen may be made, but colorists are born.