Sir Joshua Reynolds quotes

" Nothing can be made of nothing; he who has laid up no material can produce no combination. " # Deeds and Good Deeds

" Invention strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory; nothing can come from nothing. " # Invention and Inventor # Memory # Love

" The real character of a man is found out by his amusements. " # Character # Amusement # Friends and Friendship

" If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency. " # Work # Moderation # Learning

" What is a well-chosen collection of pictures, but walls hung round with thoughts? " # Love # Books - Reading # Arts and Artists

" Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory: nothing can come of nothing. " # Invention and Inventor # Memory # Love

" 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 will supply their deficiency. " # Genius # Learning # Moderation

" A mere copier of nature can never produce any thing great, can never raise and enlarge the conceptions, or warm the heart of the spectator. " # Books - Reading # Nature # Death and Dying

" Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius. " # Genius # Taste # Teachers and Teaching

" If deceiving the eye were the only business of the art, there is no doubt, indeed, but the minute painter would be more apt to succeed; but it is not the eye, it is the mind, which the painter of genius desires to address; nor will he waste a moment upon those smaller objects, which only serve to catch the sense, to divide the attention, and to counteract his great design of speaking to the heart. " # Arts and Artists # Genius # Business