A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great.
Joshua Reynolds

A room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts.
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

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

Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own teachers.
Joshua Reynolds

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

It is but a poor eloquence which only shows that the orator can talk.
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 real character of a man is found out by his amusements.
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

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