In writing, you have to contend with the world; in painting, you have only to carry on a friendly strife with Nature. You sit down to your task, and are happy. From the moment that you take up the pen...

In writing, you have to contend with the world; in painting, you have only to carry on a friendly strife with Nature. You sit down to your task, and are happy. From the moment that you take up the pen...

The painter not only takes a delight in nature, he has a new and exquisite source of pleasure opened to him in the study and contemplation of works of art⁠— “Whate’er Lorraine light touch’d with soft’...

I have naturally but little imagination, and am not of a very sanguine turn of mind. I have some desire to enjoy the present good, and some fondness for the past; but I am not at all given to build ca...

We hear it maintained by people of more gravity than understanding, that genius and taste are strictly reducible to rules, and that there is a rule for everything. So far is it from being true that th...

Genius or originality is, for the most part, some strong quality in the mind, answering to and bringing out some new and striking quality in nature. Imagination is, more properly, the power of carryin...

People have about as substantial an idea of Cobbett as they have of Cribb. His blows are as hard, and he himself is as impenetrable. One has no notion of him as making use of a fine pen, but a great m...

There are people who have but one idea: at least, if they have more, they keep it a secret, for they never talk but of one subject. There is Major Cartwright: he has but one idea or subject of discour...

The description of persons who have the fewest ideas of all others are mere authors and readers. It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else. A lounger who is ...

Coming forward and seating himself on the ground in his white dress and tightened turban, the chief of the Indian Jugglers begins with tossing up two brass balls, which is what any of us could do, and...

I never was in a better place or humour than I am at present for writing on this subject. I have a partridge getting ready for my supper, my fire is blazing on the hearth, the air is mild for the seas...

Those persons who are much accustomed to abstract contemplation are generally unfitted for active pursuits, and vice versa. I myself am sufficiently decided and dogmatical in my opinions, and yet in a...

Few things show the human character in a more ridiculous light than the circumstance of will-making. It is the latest opportunity we have of exercising the natural perversity of the disposition, and w...

The two chief points which Sir Joshua aims at in his Discourses are to show that excellence in the Fine Arts is the result of pains and study rather than of genius, and that all beauty, grace, and gra...

The first inquiry which runs through Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses is whether the student ought to look at nature with his own eyes or with the eyes of others, and on the whole, he apparently incli...

I have been sometimes accused of a fondness for paradoxes, but I cannot in my own mind plead guilty to the charge. I do not indeed swear by an opinion because it is old; but neither do I fall in love ...

Few subjects are more nearly allied than these two⁠—vulgarity and affectation. It may be said of them truly that “thin partitions do their bounds divide.” There cannot be a surer proof of a low origin...

Orion, the subject of this landscape, was the classical Nimrod; and is called by Homer, “a hunter of shadows, himself a shade.” He was the son of Neptune; and having lost an eve in some affray between...

Orion, the subject of this landscape, was the classical Nimrod; and is called by Homer, “a hunter of shadows, himself a shade.” He was the son of Neptune; and having lost an eve in some affray between...

The great object of the sonnet seems to be, to express in musical numbers, and as it were with undivided breath, some occasional thought or personal feeling, “some fee-grief due to the poet’s breast.”...

One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a journey; but I like to go by myself. I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me. I am then never less alone ...

There is a set of people who fairly come under this denomination. They spend their time and their breath in coffeehouses and other places of public resort, hearing or repeating some new thing. They si...

There is such a thing as an aristocracy or privileged order in letters which has sometimes excited my wonder, and sometimes my spleen. We meet with authors who have never done anything, but who have a...

Criticism is an art that undergoes a great variety of changes, and aims at different objects at different times. At first, it is generally satisfied to give an opinion whether a work is good or bad, a...

The great and the little have, no doubt, a real existence in the nature of things; but they both find pretty much the same level in the mind of man. It is a common measure, which does not always accom...

It is not easy to write a familiar style. Many people mistake a familiar for a vulgar style, and suppose that to write without affectation is to write at random. On the contrary, there is nothing that...

Effeminacy of character arises from a prevalence of the sensibility over the will; or it consists in a want of fortitude to bear pain or to undergo fatigue, however urgent the occasion. We meet with i...

Distant objects please, because, in the first place, they imply an idea of space and magnitude, and because, not being obtruded too close upon the eye, we clothe them with the indistinct and airy colo...

Corporate bodies are more corrupt and profligate than individuals, because they have more power to do mischief, and are less amenable to disgrace or punishment. They feel neither shame, remorse, grati...

I think not; and that for the following reasons, as well as I can give them:⁠— Actors belong to the public: their persons are not their own property. They exhibit themselves on the stage: that is enou...

The chief disadvantage of knowing more and seeing farther than others, is not to be generally understood. A man is, in consequence of this, liable to start paradoxes, which immediately transport him b...

A lady was complaining to a friend of mine of the credulity of people in attending to quack advertisements, and wondering who could be taken in by them⁠—“for that she had never bought but one half-gui...

It is astonishing, with all our opportunities and practice, how little we know of this subject. For myself, I feel that the more I learn, the less I understand it. I remember, several years ago, a con...

The natural in visible objects is whatever is ordinarily presented to the senses: the picturesque is that which stands out and catches the attention by some striking peculiarity: the ideal is that whi...

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern⁠—why, then, should it trouble us that...

There is a passage in Werter which contains a very pleasing illustration of this doctrine, and is as follows:⁠— “About a league from the town is a place called Walheim. It is very agreeably situated o...