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"The art of seeing Nature, or in other words, the art of using Models, is in reality the great object, the point to which all our studies are directed."

"A painter must compensate the natural deficiencies of his art. He has but one sentence to utter, but one moment to exhibit. He cannot, like the poet or historian, expatiate."

"Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory: nothing can come of nothing."

"A painter must not only be of necessity an imitator of the works of nature...but he must be as necessarily an imitator of the works of other painters: this appears more humiliating, but is equally tru…"

"The true test of all the arts, is not solely whether the production is a true copy of nature, but whether it answers the end of art, which is to produce a pleasing effect upon the mind."

"If deceiving the eye were the only business of the art, there is no doubt, indeed, but the minute painter would be more apt to succeed; but it is not the eye, it is the mind, which the painter of geni…"

"Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius."

"Nature is, and must be the fountain which alone is inexhaustible; and from which all excellencies must originally flow."

"The greatest natural genius cannot subsist on its own stock: 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 wil…"

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

"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. The painte…"

"It must be remembered that painting is not the mere gratification of sight."

"You must have no dependence on your own genius. If you have great talents, industry will improve them; if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency."

"Words should be employed as the means, not as the end: language is the instrument, conviction is the work."

"As the natural dignity of the subjectis less, the more the ornamental helps are necessary to its embellishments."

"No Art can be grafted with success on another art. For though they all profess the same origin, and to proceed from the same stock, yet each has its own peculiar modes both of imitating nature, and of…"

"The mind is but a barren soil; a soil which is soon exhausted, and will produce no crop, or only one, unless it be continually fertilized and enriched with foreign matter."

"What has pleased, and continues to please, is likely to please again: hence are derived the rules of art, and on this immoveable foundation they must ever stand."

"You are never to lose sight of nature; the instant you do, you are all abroad, at the mercy of every gust of fashion, without knowing or seeing the point to which you ought to steer."

"A mere copier of nature can never produce any thing great, can never raise and enlarge the conceptions, or warm the heart of the spectator."

"Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellencies, which are out of the reach of the rules of art; a power which no precepts can teach, and which no industry can acquire."

"What is a well-chosen collection of pictures, but walls hung round with thoughts?"