Wonder at the first sight of works of art may be the effect of ignorance and novelty; but real admiration and permanent delight in them are the growth of taste and knowledge.

Love at first sight is only realizing an imagination that has always haunted us; or meeting with a face, a figure, or cast of expression in perfection that we have seen and admired in a less degree or in less favorable circumstances a hundred times before.

The insolence of the vulgar is in proportion to their ignorance. They treat everything with contempt which they do not understand.

We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.

When one can do better than everyone else in the same walk, one does not make any very painful exertions to outdo oneself. The progress of improvement ceases nearly at the point where competition ends.

Refinement creates beauty everywhere. It is the grossness of the spectator that discovers anything like grossness in the object.

No really great man ever thought himself so.