Top 60 Joshua Reynolds Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.”

— Joshua Reynolds

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

— Joshua Reynolds

3. “The mind is but a barren soil; a soil which is soon exhausted, and will produce no crop, or only one, unless it be continually fertilized and enriched with foreign matter.”

— Joshua Reynolds

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

— Joshua Reynolds

5. “The excellence of every art, must consist in the complete accomplishment of its purpose.”

— Joshua Reynolds

6. “Nothing is denied to well-directed labor.”

— Joshua Reynolds

7. “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

8. “A room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts.”

— Joshua Reynolds

9. “Excellence is never granted to man, but as the reward of labour.”

— Joshua Reynolds

10. “And he who does not know himself does not know others, so it may be said with equal truth, that he who does not know others knows himself but very imperfectly.”

— Joshua Reynolds

11. “Gardening as far as Gardening is Art, or entitled to that appellation, is a deviation from nature; for if the true taste consists, as many hold, in banishing every appearance of Art, or any traces of the footsteps of man, it would then be no longer a Garden.”

— Joshua Reynolds

12. “A passion for his art, and an eager desire to excel, will more than supply an artist with the place of method.”

— Joshua Reynolds

13. “He who resolves never to ransack any mind but his own, will be soon reduced, from mere barrenness, to the poorest of all imitations; he will be obliged to imitate himself, and to repeat what he has before often repeated.”

— Joshua Reynolds

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

— Joshua Reynolds

15. “Certainly, nothing can be more simple than monotony.”

— Joshua Reynolds

16. “A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great.”

— Joshua Reynolds

17. “Raphael and Titian seem to have looked at Nature for different purposes; they both had the power of extending their view to the whole; but one looked only for the general effect as produced by form, the other as produced by colour.”

— Joshua Reynolds

18. “Art in its perfection is not ostentatious; it lies hid and works its effect, itself unseen.”

— Joshua Reynolds

19. “A mere copier of nature can never produce any thing great, can never raise and enlarge the conceptions, or warm the heart of the spectator.”

— Joshua Reynolds

20. “Common observation and a plain understanding is the source of all art.”

— Joshua Reynolds

21. “The art of seeing nature, or, in other words, the art of using models, is in reality the great object, the point to which all our studies are directed.”

— Joshua Reynolds

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

— Joshua Reynolds

23. “The great end of all arts is to make an impression on the imagination and the feeling. The imitation of nature frequently does this. Sometimes it fails and something else succeeds.”

— Joshua Reynolds

24. “I wish you to be persuaded that success in your art depends almost entirely on your own industry; but the industry which I principally recommend is not the industry of the hands, but of the mind.”

— Joshua Reynolds

25. “A painter must compensate the natural deficiencies of his art. He has but one sentence to utter, but one moment to exhibit. He cannot, like the poet or historian, expatiate, and impress the mind...”

— Joshua Reynolds

26. “The painter of genius will not waste a moment upon those smaller objects which only serve to catch the sense, to divide the attention, and to counteract his great design of speaking to the heart.”

— Joshua Reynolds

27. “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 from nothing.”

— Joshua Reynolds

28. “Taste depends upon those finer emotions which make the organization of the soul.”

— Joshua Reynolds

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

— Joshua Reynolds

30. “There can be no doubt but that he who has the most materials has the greatest means of invention...”

— Joshua Reynolds

31. “In portraits, the grace and, we may add, the likeness consists more in taking the general air than in observing the exact similitude of every feature.”

— Joshua Reynolds

32. “It is to Titian we must turn our eyes to find excellence with regard to color, and light and shade, in the highest degree. He was both the first and the greatest master of this art. By a few strokes he knew how to mark the general image and character of whatever object he attempted...”

— Joshua Reynolds

33. “Simplicity is an exact mediumbetween too little and too much.”

— Joshua Reynolds

34. “While I recommend studying the art from artists, Nature is and must be the fountain which alone is inexhaustible, and from which all excellences must originally flow.”

— Joshua Reynolds

35. “Nothing can be made of nothing; he who has laid up no material can produce no combination.”

— Joshua Reynolds

36. “Less coin, less care...”

— Joshua Reynolds

37. “Perhaps blue, red, and yellow strike the mind more forcibly from there not being any great union between them, as martial music, which is intended to rouse the nobler passions...”

— Joshua Reynolds

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

— Joshua Reynolds

39. “What has pleased and continues to please, is likely to please again; hence are derived the rules of art, and on this immovable foundation they must ever stand.”

— Joshua Reynolds

40. “Poetry operates by raising our curiosity, engaging the mind by degrees to take an interest in the event, keeping that event suspended, and surprising at last with an unexpected catastrophe.”

— Joshua Reynolds

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

— Joshua Reynolds

42. “You are never to lose sight of nature; the instant you do, you are all abroad, at the mercy of every gust of fashion, without knowing or seeing the point to which you ought to steer.”

— Joshua Reynolds

43. “Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellences which are put of the reach of the rules of art: a power which no precepts can teach, and which no industry can acquire.”

— Joshua Reynolds

44. “It is impossible that anything will be well understood or well done that is taken into a reluctant understanding, and executed with a servile hand.”

— Joshua Reynolds

45. “Every art, like our own, has in its composition fluctuating as well as fixed principles. It is an attentive inquiry into their difference that will enable us to determine how far we are influenced by custom and habit, and what is fixed in the nature of things.”

— Joshua Reynolds

46. “The first degree of proficiency is, in painting, what grammar is in literature, a general preparation for whatever the student may afterward choose for more particular application. The power of drawing, modeling, and using colors, is very properly called the language of the art.”

— Joshua Reynolds

47. “Whatever trips you make, you must still have nature in your eye...”

— Joshua Reynolds

48. “The true test of all the arts is not solely whether the production is a true copy of nature, but whether it answers the end of art, which is to produce a pleasing effect upon the mind.”

— Joshua Reynolds

49. “The great use of copying, if it be at all useful, should seem to be in learning color; yet even coloring will never be perfectly attained by servilely copying the model before you.”

— Joshua Reynolds

50. “The young mind is pliable and imitates, but in more advanced states grows rigid and must be warmed and softened before it will receive a deep impression.”

— Joshua Reynolds