An Eye Critically Nice Can Only Be

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.

The General Ideas Which Are Expressed In Sketches, Correspond Very Well To The Art Often Used In Poetry... Every Reader Making Out The Detail According To His Own Particular Imagination... But A Painter, When He Represents Eve On Canvas, Is Obliged To Give A Determined Form, And His Own Idea Of Beauty Distinctly Expressed.

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.

While I Recommend Studying The Art From Artists, Nature Is And Must Be The Fountain Which Alone Is Inexhaustible, And From Which All Excellences Must Originally Flow.

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.