Washington Allston Quotes

The only competition worthy of a wise man is with himself.

Distinction is the consequence, never the object of a great mind.

Nothing gets you behind faster than trying to keep up with people who are already there.

The greatest of all fools is the proud fool--who is at the mercy of every fool he meets.

The most intangible, and therefore the worst, kind of a lie is a half truth. This is the peculiar device of a conscientious detractor.

If the whole world should agree to speak nothing but truth, what an abridgment it would make of speech! And what an unravelling there would be of the invisible webs which men, like so many spiders, now weave about each other!

Injustice allowed at home is not likely to be corrected abroad.

If an Artist love his Art for its own sake, he will delight in excellence wherever he meets it, as well in the work of another as in his own.

In the same degree that we overrate ourselves, we shall underrate others.

It is my greatest misfortune to be too lazy, and by the few mortifications I have already set with on that account I predict many evils in my future life. I have always the inclination to do what I ought; but by continually procrastinating for tomorrow the business of today, I insensibly delay, until at the end of one month I find myself in the same place as when I began it.

Never expect justice from a vain man; if he has the negative magnanimity not to disparage you, it is the most you can expect.

I have no ambition to shine beyond my abilities.

I am inclined to think from my own experience that the difficulty to eminence lies not in the road, but in the timidity of the traveler.

I cannot believe that any man who deserved fame ever labored for it; that is, directly. For, as fame is but the contingent of excellence, it would be like an attempt to project a shadow, before its substance was obtained.

Never judge a work of art by its defects.

Make no man your idol, for the best man must have faults; and his faults will insensibly become yours, in addition to your own.

Humility is also a healing virtue; it will cicatrize a thousand wounds, which pride would keep forever open.

An original mind is rarely understood, until it has been reflected from some half-dozen congenial with it, so averse are men to admitting the true in an unusual form; whilst any novelty, however fantastic, however false, is greedily swallowed.

Fame has no necessary conjunction with praise; it may exist without the breath of a word: it is a recognition of excellence which must be felt, but need not be spoken. Even the envious must feel it: feel it, and hate in silence.

The most common disguise of Envy is in praise of what is subordinate.

Desert being the essential condition of praise, there can be no reality in the one without the other.

Reputation is but a synonym of popularity: dependent on suffrage, to be increased or diminished at the will of the voters.

He who has no pleasure in looking up, is not fit so much as to look down.

Nothing is rarer than a solitary lie; for lies breed like Surinam toads; you cannot tell one but out it comes with a hundred young ones on its back.

No man knows himself as an original.