Benjamin Haydon Quotes

Art is a reality, not a definition; inasmuch as it approaches a reality, it approaches perfection, and inasmuch as it approaches a mere definition, it is imperfect and untrue.

When a man is no longer anxious to do better than well, he is done for.

Temperance in everything is requisite for happiness.

There surely is in human nature an inherent propensity to extract all the good out of all the evil.

Fortunately for serious minds, a bias recognized is a bias sterilized.

The safest principle through life, instead of reforming others, is to set about perfecting yourself.

Genius is nothing more than common faculties refined to a greater intensity. There are no astonishing ways of doing astonishing things. All astonishing things are done by ordinary materials.

The only legitimate artists in England are the architects.

It is highly convenient to believe in the infinite mercy of God when you feel the need of mercy, but remember also his infinite justice.

All government is an evil, but, of the two form's of that evil, democracy or monarchy, the sounder is monarchy; the more able to do its will, democracy.

Never suffer youth to be an excuse for inadequacy, nor age and fame to be an excuse for indolence.

The greatest geniuses have always attributed everything to God, as if conscious of being possessed of a spark of His divinity.

It is better to make friends than adversaries of a conquered race.

Beware of the beginnings of vice. Do not delude yourself with the belief that it can be argued against in the presence of the exciting cause. Nothing but actual flight can save you.

Mistrusts sometimes come over one's mind of the justice of God. But let a real misery come again, and to whom do we fly? To whom do we instinctively and immediately look up?

Satan is to be punished eternally in the end, but for a while he triumphs.

Newton's health, and confusion to mathematics.

If men would only take the chances of doing right because it is right, instead of the immediate certainty of the advantage of doing wrong, how much happier would their lives be.

Some persons are so devotional they have not one bit of true religion in them.

How difficult it is to get men to believe that any other man can or does act from disinterestedness!

Do your duty, and don't swerve from it. Do that which your conscience tells you to be right, and leave the consequences to God.

Men of genius are often considered superstitious, but the fact is, the fineness of their nerve renders them more alive to the supernatural than ordinary men.

Nothing is difficult; it is only we who are indolent.

Invention is totally independent of the will.

Genius in poverty is never feared, because nature, though liberal in her gifts in one instance, is forgetful in another.

Danger is the very basis of superstition. It produces a searching after help supernaturally when human means are no longer supposed to be available.

There must be more malice than love in the hearts of all wits.

My dear Keats go on, don't despair, collect incidents, study characters, read Shakespeare and trust in Providence.