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

Nothing is denied to well-directed labor.

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.

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.

Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own teachers.

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.