The complete works of sir Joshua Reynolds, with an orig. memoir and anecdotes by the author

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Página 48 - There is no excellent Beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. A man cannot tell, whether Apelles or Albert Durer were the more trifler; whereof the one would make a personage by geometrical proportions, the other by taking the best parts out of divers faces to make one Excellent.
Página lxxvii - His talents of every kind — powerful from nature, and not meanly cultivated by...
Página ix - Queen; in which he very early took delight to read, till by feeling the charms of verse, he became, as he relates, irrecoverably a poet. Such are the accidents which, sometimes remembered, and perhaps sometimes forgotten, produce that particular designation of mind, and propensity for some certain science or employment, which is commonly called genius. The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.
Página 34 - You must have no dependence on your own genius. If you have great talents, industry will improve them ; if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency. Nothing is denied to well-directed labour: nothing is to be obtained without it...
Página xli - This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here. No jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle. Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed...
Página 123 - ... entertain such sentiments as these, we generally rest contented with mere words, or at best entertain notions not only groundless but pernicious.
Página 51 - There is, likewise, a kind of symmetry, or proportion, which may properly be said to belong to deformity. A figure lean or corpulent, tall or short, though deviating from beauty, may still have a certain union of the various parts, which may contribute to make them on the whole not unpleasing.
Página 162 - What is done by Painting, must be done at one blow; curiosity has received at once all the satisfaction it can ever have. There are, however, other intellectual qualities and dispositions which the Painter can satisfy and affect as powerfully as the poet: among those we may reckon our love of novelty, variety, and contrast; these qualities, on examination, will be found to refer to a certain activity and restlessness which...
Página 155 - Whoever would reform a nation, supposing a bad taste to prevail in it, will not accomplish his purpose by going directly against the stream of their prejudices. Men's minds must be prepared to receive what is new to them. Reformation is a work of time. A national taste, however wrong it may be, cannot be totally changed at once ; we must yield a little to the prepossession which has taken hold on the mind, and we may then bring people to adopt what would offend them, if endeavoured to be introduced...
Página 184 - ... that a part may be sacrificed for the good of the whole. Thus, whether the masses consist of light or shadow, it is necessary that they should be compact and of a pleasing shape: to this end some parts may be made darker and some lighter, and reflections stronger than nature would warrant.

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