The humblest painter is a true scholar; and the best of scholars the scholar of nature.

There are only three pleasures in life pure and lasting, and all derived from inanimate things-books, pictures and the face of nature.

Popularity is neither fame nor greatness.

Those people who are always improving never become great. Greatness is an eminence, the ascent to which is steep and lofty, and which a man must seize on at once by natural boldness and vigor, and not by patient, wary steps.

The expression of a gentleman's face is not so much that of refinement, as of flexibility, not of sensibility and enthusiasm as of indifference; it argues presence of mind rather than enlargement of ideas.

It is hard for any one to be an honest politician who is not born and bred a Dissenter.

A proud man is satisfied with his own good opinion, and does not seek to make converts to it.