Quotes from WASHINGTON ALLSTON

Injustice allowed at home is not likely to be corrected abroad.

Never judge a work of art by its defects.

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.

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.

Humility is also a healing virtue; it will cicatrize a thousand wounds, which pride would keep forever open.

The only competition worthy of a wise man is with himself.

Reputation is but a synonym of popularity: dependent on suffrage, to be increased or diminished at the will of the voters.

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.

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.

The most common disguise of Envy is in praise of what is subordinate.

The most intangible, and therefore the worst, kind of lie is a half truth. This is the peculiar device of a conscientious detractor.

Distinction is the consequence, never the object of a great mind.

The Painter who seeks popularity in Art closes the door upon his own genius.

The greatest of all fools is the proud fool--who is at the mercy of every fool he meets.

The love of gain never made a Painter; but it has marred many.

Make no man your idol, for the best man must have faults; and his faults will insensibly become yours, in addition to your own.

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.

If I prove extravagant, I shall be more so from ignorance than willfulness. I am not wholly insensible to the pleasures of the world, therefore shall not be governed entirely by necessity; but I flatter myself, at least, in being able to restrain their gratification within due bonds.

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.

I have no ambition to shine beyond my abilities.

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.

To you sir, this may appear strange; it may appear impertinent; it may appear astonishing; but to me, sir, who am as uncorrupted, us unprotected by power, it is a duty which every honest man out of office should observe towards every rogue in.

I have not been three days at Rome. How charming are the Italian women! Nature seems here to have concentrated all her beauties. In other countries she has bestow'd only one feature; but in Rome the countenance is perfect. There she has given souls without bodies; here they both exist in the same being.

If the whole world should agree to speak nothing but truth, what an abridgment it would make of speech! And what an unraveling there would be of the invisible webs which men, like so many spiders, now weave about each other!