It is vain for painters... to endeavour to invent without materials on which the mind may work.

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

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

Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own teachers.

A room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts.

Our Exhibitions [The Royal Academy] have... a mischievous tendency, by seducing the Painter to an ambition of pleasing indiscriminately the mixed multitude of people who resort to them.

Art in its perfection is not ostentatious; it lies hid and works its effect, itself unseen.

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.

A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great.

Taste depends upon those finer emotions which make the organization of the soul.

Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellences which are put of the reach of the rules of art: a power which no precepts can teach, and which no industry can acquire.

Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.

Successful people will tell you that they do not wonder if they are going to succeed. They know they will. It's just a matter of when.

From the neglect of a real duty, she became the slave of a false one.

The American Revolution and Declaration of Independence, it has often been argued, were fueled by the most radical of all American political ideas.

Honest talk about the deficit is risky. Voters are more enthusiastic about the abstract notion of deficit reduction than about the painful details of accomplishing it.

The only reward one should offer an artist is to buy his work.

We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never so forlornly unhappy as when we have lost our love object or its love.

The sort of strenuous reading and writing program I advocate - four to six hours a day, every day - will not seem strenuous if you really enjoy doing these things and have an aptitude for them.

You sat there and watched our colleague Ruth Smeeth abused at a Labour event. Your words are hollow.

Thought and theory must precede all action, that moves to salutary purposes. Yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.