I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton (1855) by Sir David Brewster (Volume II. Ch. 27)

Кто же ты тогда, суетный прах и пыль! Как бы ни именовали тебя — король, епископ, церковь, государство, парламент или еще как-нибудь, — кто дал тебе право вторгаться в своем ничтожестве между душой человека и его создателем? Занимайся своим делом. Если он верит не так, как ты, это доказывает, что ты веришь иначе, чем он, и нет на земле той силы, которая могла бы рассудить вас.

— Thomas Paine «Rights of Man»

Alfred Boucher (1850-1934) — Bust of Volubilis; white marble, height 50.5 cm. Sold for £40,000 in 19th And 20th Century Sculpture Sale on 25 May 2016 in Sotheby's London.

Volubilis is one of Alfred Boucher's best known and most celebrated models. The work was inspired by a poem by René François Sully Prud'homme (1839-1907), which discusses the volubilis, a flower. In Boucher's model, like a flower unfurling its petals, the girl emerges from the roughly-hewn rock.

Gustave Frédéric Michel (1851-1924) — The Shape Releases Herself from the Material; white marble, 58 by 47cm. Sold for £25,000 in European Art: Paintings & Sculpture Sale on 18 June 2020 in Sotheby's London.

Gustave Frédéric Michel was a French sculptor, according to Marina Warner «one of the most famous sculptors of the first decades of this (20th) century in France», although virtually unknown today. He also taught sculpture; among his pupils was the American Edith Howland.