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 will be obliged to imitate himself, and to repeat what he has before often repeated. When we know the subject designed by such men, it will never be difficult to guess what kind of work is to be produced.

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 for…

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

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 app…

Could we have entered into the mind of Sir Isaac Newton, and have traced all the steps by which he produced his great works, we might see nothing very extraord…

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

Genius may conceive but patient labor must consummate.