You must have no dependence on your own genius. If you have great talents, industry will improve them; if you have but moderate abilities, industry w… - Joshua Reynolds

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.

What is a well-chosen collection of pictures, but walls hung round with thoughts?

A painter must not only be of necessity an imitator of the works of nature...but he must be as necessarily an imitator of the works of other painters: this appears more humiliating, but is equally true; and no man can be an artist, whatever he may suppose, upon any other terms.