Painters From England

"A grave blockhead should always go about with a lively one — they shew one another off to the best advantage."

"We are very much what others think of us. The reception our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed, or damps our efforts."

"The true barbarian is he who thinks every thing barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices."

"The most learned are often the most narrow-minded men."

"Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality."

"If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation."

"The only vice which cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy."

"To a superior race of beings the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem equally ridiculous."

"One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect."

"Unlimited power is helpless, as arbitrary power is capricious. Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We can attempt nothing great, but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter: we can persevere in nothing great, but from a pride in overcoming them."

"No wise man can have a contempt for the prejudices of others; and he should even stand in a certain awe of his own, as if they were aged parents and monitors. They may in the end prove wiser than he."

"The truly proud man knows neither superiors nor inferiors. The first he does not admit of: the last he does not concern himself about."

"Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses."

"As is our confidence, so is our capacity."

"Our friends are generally ready to do everything for us, except the very thing we wish them to do."

"The public have neither shame or gratitude."

"Satirists gain the applause of others through fear, not through love."

"It is well that there is no one without a fault; for he would not have a friend in the world."

"There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our friends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please — that is as they please or displease us."

"The world judge of men by their ability in their profession, and we judge of ourselves by the same test; for it is on that on which our success in life depends."

"There are names written in her immortal scroll, at which FAME blushes!"

"The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savors less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if we thought our weaknesses as good as other people's virtues."

"Death is the greatest evil, because it cuts off hope."

"Hope is the best possession. None are completely wretched but those who are without hope; and few are reduced so low as that."

"Envy among other ingredients has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good-fortune."

"Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of admiration."

"Wit is, in fact, the eloquence of indifference."

"Some one is generally sure to be the sufferer by a joke."

"Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food."

"Anyone must be mainly ignorant or thoughtless, who is surprised at everything he sees; or wonderfully conceited who expects everything to conform to his standard of propriety."

"Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be."

"The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves."

"We are all of us more or less the slaves of opinion."

"It is hard for any one to be an honest politician who is not born and bred a Dissenter."

"Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress."

"The Tory is one who is governed by sense and habit alone. He considers not what is possible, but what is real; he gives might the preference over right. He cries long life to the conqueror, and is ever strong upon the stronger side — the side of corruption and prerogative."

"I am no politician, and still less can I be said to be a party-man : I have a hatred of tyranny, and a contempt for its tools; and this feeling I have expressed as often and as strongly as I could. I cannot sit quietly down under the claims of barefaced power, and have tried to expose the little arts of sophistry by which they are defended. I have no mind to have my person made a property of, nor my understanding made a dupe of. I deny that liberty and slavery are convertible terms, that right and wrong, truth and falsehood, plenty and famine, the comforts or wretchedness of a people, are matters of perfect indifference. That is all I know of the matter; but on these points I am likely to remain incorrigible, in spite of any arguments that I have seen used to the contrary. It needs no sagacity to discover that two and two make four; but to persist in maintaining this obvious position, if all the fashion, authority, hypocrisy, and venality of mankind were arrayed against it, would require a considerable effort of personal courage, and would soon leave a man in a very formidable minority."

"The love of fame, as it enters at times into his mind, is only another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority — that of time."

"He talked on for ever; and you wished him to talk on for ever."

"The temple of fame stands upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of dead men."

"The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity; of Spenser, remoteness; of Milton, elevation; of Shakespeare, every thing."

"The poetical impression of any object is that uneasy, exquisite sense of beauty or power that cannot be contained within itself; that is impatient of all limit; that (as flame bends to flame) strives to link itself to some other image of kindred beauty or grandeur; to enshrine itself, as it were, in the highest forms of fancy, and to relieve the aching sense of pleasure by expressing it in the boldest manner, and by the most striking examples of the same quality in other instances."

"Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else."

"All that is worth remembering in life, is the poetry of it."

"Grace is the absence of every thing that indicates pain or difficulty, or hesitation or incongruity."

"Grace in women has more effect than beauty."

"Grace has been defined the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul."

"There is a natural tendency in sects to narrow the mind. The extreme stress laid upon differences of minor importance, to the neglect of more general truths and broader views of things, gives an inverted bias to the understanding; and this bias is continually increased by the eagerness of controversy, and captious hostility to the prevailing system. A party-feeling of this kind once formed will insensibly communicate itself to other topics; and will be too apt to lead its votaries to a contempt for the opinions of others, a jealousy of every difference of sentiment, and a disposition to arrogate all sound principle as well as understanding to themselves, and those who think with them. We can readily conceive how such persons, from fixing too high a value on the practical pledge which they have given of the independence and sincerity of their opinions, come at last to entertain a suspicion of every one else as acting under the shackles of prejudice or the mask of hypocrisy. All those who have not given in their unqualified protest against received doctrines and established authority, are supposed to labour under an acknowledged incapacity to form a rational determination on any subject whatever. Any argument, not having the presumption of singularity in its favour, is immediately set aside as nugatory. There is, however, no prejudice so strong as that which arises from a fancied exemption from all prejudice. For this last implies not only the practical conviction that it is right, but the theoretical assumption that it cannot be wrong. From considering all objections as in this manner "null and void,” the mind becomes so thoroughly satisfied with its own conclusions, as to render any farther examination of them superfluous, and confounds its exclusive pretensions to reason with the absolute possession of it."

"They are the only honest hypocrites. Their life is a voluntary dream; a studied madness."

"The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of nature."