Washington Allston Quotes
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The only competition worthy of a wise man is with himself.
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Distinction is the consequence, never the object of a great mind.
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Selfishness in art, as in other things, is sensibility kept at home.
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Humility is also a healing virtue; it will cicatrize a thousand wounds, which pride would keep forever open.
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Nothing gets you behind faster than trying to keep up with people who are already there.
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Never judge a work of art by its defects.
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Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul Veronese absolutely enchanted me, for they took away all sense of subject. ... It was the poetry of color which I felt, procreative in its nature, giving birth to a thousand things which the eye cannot see, and distinct from their cause.
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Never expect justice from a vain man; if he has the negative magnanimity not to disparage you, it is the most you can expect.
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All effort at originality must end either in the quaint or the monstrous. For no man knows himself as an original; he can only believe it on the report of others.
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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.
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The love of gain never made a painter; but it has marred many.
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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!
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It is a hard matter for a man to lie all over, nature having provided king's evidence in almost every member. The hand will sometimes act as a vane, to show which way the wind blows, even when every feature is set the other way; the knees smite together and sound the alarm of fear under a fierce countenance; the legs shake with anger when all above us calm.
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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.
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The most intangible, and therefore the worst, kind of a lie is a half truth. This is the peculiar device of a conscientious detractor.
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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.
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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.
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The greatest of all fools is the proud fool--who is at the mercy of every fool he meets.
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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.
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I have no ambition to shine beyond my abilities.
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Injustice allowed at home is not likely to be corrected abroad.
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Thus falling, falling from afar,As if some melancholy starHad mingled with her light her sighs,And dropped them from the skies.
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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.
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Make no man your idol, for the best man must have faults; and his faults will insensibly become yours, in addition to your own.