Sir Joshua Reynolds Quotes

The mind is but a barren soil; a soil which is soon exhausted, and will produce no crop, or only one, unless it be continually fertilized and enriched with foreign matter.

Style in painting is the same as in writing,--a power over materials, whether words or colors, by which conceptions or sentiments are conveyed.

Simplicity is an exact medium between too little and too much.

The first degree of proficiency is, in painting, what grammar is in literature, a general preparation for whatever species of the art the student may afterwards choose for his more particular application. The power of drawing, modelling, and using colors is very properly called the language of the art.

In portraits, the grace and, we may add, the likeness consists more in taking the general air than in observing the exact similitude of every feature.

The mind is but a barren soil; a soil which is soon exhausted, and will produce no crop or only one, unless it be continually fertilized and enriched with foreign matter.

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.

Nothing is denied to well-directed labor.

If you have great talents, industry will improve them; if moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiencies. Nothing is denied to well-directed labor; nothing is ever to be attained without it.

Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellences which are out of the reach of the rules of art: a power which no precepts can teach, and which no industry can acquire.