Joshua Reynolds Quotes

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

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

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

Simplicity is an exact mediumbetween too little and too much.

A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great.

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.

Excellence is never granted to man, but as the reward of labour.

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

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

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 from nothing.

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.

An artist who brings to his work a mind tolerably furnished with the general principles of art, and a taste formed upon the works of good artists – in short, who knows in what excellence consists - will, with the assistance of models... be an overmatch for the greatest painter that ever lived who should be debarred such advantages.

But young men have not only this frivolous ambition of being thought masters of execution, inciting them on the one hand, but also their natural sloth tempting them on the other. They are terrified at the prospect before them, of the toil required to attain exactness. The impetuosity of youth is disgusted at the slow approaches of a regular siege, and desires, from mere impatience of labour, to take the citadel by storm. They wish to find some shorter path to excellence, and hope to obtain the reward of eminence by other means, than those which the indispensable rules of art have prescribed.

Whatever trips you make, you must still have nature in your eye.

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

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.

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

Certainly, nothing can be more simple than monotony.

There can be no doubt but that he who has the most materials has the greatest means of invention.

Less coin, less care.

If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.

The greatest man is he who forms the taste of a nation; the next greatest is he who corrupts it.

Those who are not conversant in works of art are often surprised at the high value set by connoisseurs on drawings which appear careless, and in every respect unfinished; but they are truly valuable... they give the idea of a whole.

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

I wish you to be persuaded that success in your art depends almost entirely on your own industry; but the industry which I principally recommend is not the industry of the hands, but of the mind.