C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Washington Allston
Desert being the essential condition of praise, there can be no reality in the one without the other.
Fame has no necessary conjunction with praise; it may exist without the breath of a word: it is a recognition of excellence which must be felt, but need not be spoken. Even the envious must feel it,—feel it, and hate in silence.
He who has no pleasure in looking up, is not fit so much as to look down.
In the same degree that we overrate ourselves, we shall underrate others; for injustice allowed at home is not likely to be corrected abroad.
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 is calm.
It was Dante who called this noble art God’s grandchild.
Make no man your idol; for the best man must have faults, and his faults will usually become yours in addition to your own. This is as true in art as an morals.
Never expect justice from a vain man; if he has the negative magnanimity not to disparage you, it is the most you can expect.
No man knows himself as an original.
Selfishness in art, as in other things, is sensibility kept at home.
The love of gain never made a painter; but it has marred many.
The most intangible, and therefore the worst, kind of a lie is a half truth. This is the peculiar device of a “conscientious” detractor.
The painter who is content with the praise of the world in respect to what does not satisfy himself is not an artist, but an artisan; for though his reward be only praise, his pay is that of a mechanic.