Excellence is never granted to man, but as the reward of labour.

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.

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

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

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

Gardening as far as Gardening is Art, or entitled to that appellation, is a deviation from nature; for if the true taste consists, as many hold, in banishing every appearance of Art, or any traces of the footsteps of man, it would then be no longer a Garden.

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.