Painting for a whole morning gives one as excellent an appetite for one’s dinner, as old Abraham Tucker acquired for his by riding over Banstead Downs.
You are never tired of painting, because you have to set down not what you know already, but what you have just discovered.
Whatever excites the spirit of contradiction is capable of producing the last effects of heroism; which is only the highest pitch of obstinacy, in a good or bad cause, in wisdom or folly.
Landscape painting is the obvious resource of misanthropy.
The public is so in awe of its own opinion that it never dares to form any, but catches up the first idle rumour, lest it should be behindhand in its judgment, and echoes it till it is deafened with the sound of its own voice.
Poverty, labor, and calamity are not without their luxuries, which the rich, the indolent, and the fortunate in vain seek for.
Keep your misfortunes to yourself.
People addicted to secrecy are so without knowing why; they are not so for cause, but for secrecy’s sake.
One said he wondered that leather was not dearer than any other thing. Being demanded a reason: because, saith he, it is more stood upon than any other thing in the world.
The title of Ultracrepidarian critics has been given to those persons who find fault with small and insignificant details.
Those are ever the most ready to do justice to others, who feel that the world has done them justice.
In exploring new and doubtful tracts of speculation, the mind strikes out true and original views; as a drop of water hesitates at first what direction it will take, but afterwards follows its own course.
Humanity is to be met with in a den of robbers.
Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols – it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.
A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death. It not only gives us fortitude to bear pain, but teaches us at every step the precarious tenure on which we hold our present being.
The book-worm wraps himself up in his web of verbal generalities, and sees only the glimmering shadows of things reflected from the minds of others.
A man who is determined never to move out of the beaten road cannot lose his way.
A person who talks with equal vivacity on every subject, excites no interest in any. Repose is as necessary in conversation as in a picture.
We often forget our dreams so speedily: if we cannot catch them as they are passing out at the door, we never set eyes on them again.
The last pleasure in life is the sense of discharging our duty.