Style in painting is the same as in writing; a power over materials, whether words or colors, by which conceptions or sentiments are conveyed.

Invention strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory; nothing can come from nothing.

But young men have not only this frivolous ambition of being thought masters of execution, inciting them on the one hand, but also their natural sloth tempting them on the other. They are terrified at the prospect before them, of the toil required to attain exactness. The impetuosity of youth is disgusted at the slow approaches of a regular siege, and desires, from mere impatience of labour, to take the citadel by storm. They wish to find some shorter path to excellence, and hope to obtain the reward of eminence by other means, than those which the indispensable rules of art have prescribed.

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

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

He who resolves never to ransack any mind but his own, will be soon reduced, from mere barrenness, to the poorest of all imitations; he will be obliged to imitate himself, and to repeat what he has before often repeated.

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.