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.

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 real character of a man is found out by his amusements.

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.

Nothing is denied to well-directed labor.

Those who, either from their own engagements and hurry of business, or from indolence, or from conceit and vanity, have neglected looking out of themselves, as far as my experience and observation reach, have from that time not only ceased to advance, and improve in their performances, but have gone backward. They may be compared to men who have lived upon their principal, till they are reduced to beggary, and left without resources.