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

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.

Nothing is denied to well-directed labor.

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.

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.

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

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