Every art, like our own, has in its composition fluctuating as well as fixed principles. It is an attentive inquiry into their difference that will enable us to determine how far we are influenced by custom and habit, and what is fixed in the nature of things.

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

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

Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius.

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

Simplicity is an exact mediumbetween too little and too much.

Taste depends upon those finer emotions which make the organization of the soul.