Joshua Reynolds Quotes

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Joshua Reynolds

Profession : Artist

Birth : July 16, 1723

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

Joshua Reynolds

There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.

Joshua Reynolds

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

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

Joshua Reynolds

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

Joshua Reynolds

A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great.

Joshua Reynolds

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

Joshua Reynolds

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

Joshua Reynolds

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

Joshua Reynolds

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

Joshua Reynolds

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