There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.

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

The first degree of proficiency is, in painting, what grammar is in literature, a general preparation for whatever the student may afterward choose for more particular application. The power of drawing, modeling, and using colors, is very properly called the language of the art.

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.

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

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.