"There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking."
"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."
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Source: Sir Joshua Reynolds (1891). “Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses”
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"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."