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

The real character of a man is found out by his amusements.

Poetry operates by raising our curiosity, engaging the mind by degrees to take an interest in the event, keeping that event suspended, and surprising at last with an unexpected catastrophe.

Less coin, less care...

The excellence of every art, must consist in the complete accomplishment of its purpose.

I have heard painters acknowledge, though in that acknowledgment no degradation of themselves was intended, that they could do better without nature than with her; or as they express themselves, ’that it only put them out.

The real character of a man is found out by his amusements...

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

The great end of all arts is to make an impression on the imagination and the feeling. The imitation of nature frequently does this. Sometimes it fails and something else succeeds.

Whatever trips you make, you must still have nature in your eye...