In portraits, the grace and, we may add, the likeness consists more in taking the general air than in observing the exact similitude of every feature.

Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own teachers.

The value and rank of every art is in proportion to the mental labor employed in it, or the mental pleasure in producing it.

The young mind is pliable and imitates, but in more advanced states grows rigid and must be warmed and softened before it will receive a deep impression.

If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.

Excellence is never granted to man, but as the reward of labour.

Reform is a work of time; a national taste, however wrong it may be, cannot be totally changed at once.