The First Degree Of Proficiency Is, In

If You Have Great Talents, Industry Will Improve Them: If You Have But Moderate Abilities, Industry Will Supply Their Deficiency.

I Do Not See In What Manner Practice Alone Can Be Sufficient For The Production Of Correct, Excellent, And Finished Pictures. Works Deserving This Character Never Were Produced, Nor Ever Will Arise, From Memory Alone.

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.

Though Colour May Appear At First A Part Of Painting Merely Mechanical, Yet It Still Has Its Rules, And Those Grounded Upon That Presiding Principle Which Regulates Both The Great And The Little In The Study Of A Painter.

Grandeur Of Effect Is Produced By Two Different Ways Which Seem Entirely Opposed To Each Other. One Is By Reducing The Colors To Little More Than Chiaroscuro... And The Other, By Making The Colors Very Distinct And Forcible... But Still, The Presiding Principle Of Both Those Manners Is Simplicity.