If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.

About Joshua Reynolds

Sir Joshua Reynolds was an English painter who specialised in portraits. Art critic John Russell called him one of the major European painters of the 18th century.

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More quotes from Joshua Reynolds

If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.

Joshua Reynolds

English painter (1723-1792)

Words should be employed as the means, not the end; language is the instrument, conviction is the work.

Joshua Reynolds

English painter (1723-1792)

A room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts.

Joshua Reynolds

English painter (1723-1792)

The greatest man is he who forms the taste of a nation; the next greatest is he who corrupts it.

Joshua Reynolds

English painter (1723-1792)

All the gestures of children are graceful; the reign of distortion and unnatural attitudes commences with the introduction of the dancing master.

Joshua Reynolds

English painter (1723-1792)

The real character of a man is found out by his amusements.

Joshua Reynolds

English painter (1723-1792)

Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius.

Joshua Reynolds

English painter (1723-1792)

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.

Joshua Reynolds

English painter (1723-1792)

A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great.

Joshua Reynolds

English painter (1723-1792)

Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own teachers.

Joshua Reynolds

English painter (1723-1792)

It is but a poor eloquence which only shows that the orator can talk.

Joshua Reynolds

English painter (1723-1792)

The value and rank of every art is in proportion to the mental labor employed in it, or the mental pleasure in producing it.

Joshua Reynolds

English painter (1723-1792)