Washington Allston Quotes

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

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

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

Selfishness in art, as in other things, is sensibility kept at home.

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

Desert being the essential condition of praise, there can be no reality in the one without the other.

Never expect justice from a vain man; if he has the negative magnanimity not to disparage you, it is the most you can expect.

Never judge a work of art by its defects.

No man knows himself as an original.

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

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

I am inclined to think from my own experience that the difficulty to eminence lies not in the road, but in the timidity of the traveler.

I have no ambition to shine beyond my abilities.

In the same degree that we overrate ourselves, we shall underrate others.

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.

He who has no pleasure in looking up, is not fit so much as to look down.

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

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

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.

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.

The painter who is content with the praise of the world for what does not satisfy himself, is not an artist, but an artisan; for though his reward be only praise, his pay is that of a mechanic.

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

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

Nothing gets you behind faster than trying to keep up with people who are already there.

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

Never judge a work of art by its defects