All the gestures of children are graceful; the reign of distortion and unnatural attitudes commences with the introduction of the dancing master.

Excellence is never granted to man but as the reward of labor. It argues no small strength of mind to persevere in habits of industry without the pleasure of perceiving those advances, which, like the hand of a clock, whilst they make hourly approaches to their point, yet proceed so slowly as to escape observation.

Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellences which are put of the reach of the rules of art: a power which no precepts can teach, and which no industry can acquire.

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

A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great.

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.