"You must have no dependence on your own genius. If you have great talents, industry will improve them; if you have bu…"

"A mere copier of nature can never produce any thing great, can never raise and enlarge the conceptions, or warm the h…"

"Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius."

"If deceiving the eye were the only business of the art, there is no doubt, indeed, but the minute painter would be mo…"

"A painter must compensate the natural deficiencies of his art. He has but one sentence to utter, but one moment to ex…"

"It must be remembered that painting is not the mere gratification of sight."

"As the natural dignity of the subject(of a portrait)is less, the more the ornamental helps are necessary to its embel…"

"Words should be employed as the means, not as the end: language is the instrument, conviction is the work."

"A painter must not only be of necessity an imitator of the works of nature...but he must be as necessarily an imitato…"

"Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gather…"