Reform is a work of time; a national taste, however wrong it may be, cannot be totally changed at once.
Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own teachers.
Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius.
Nothing is denied to well-directed labor.
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.
All the gestures of children are graceful; the reign of distortion and unnatural attitudes commences with the introduction of the dancing master.