"There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking."
"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."
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Source: Sir Joshua Reynolds (1837). “Discourses on Painting and the Fine Arts, delivered at the Royal Academy. With a portrait”, p.30
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"The real character of a man is found out by his amusements."
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"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."
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