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The only competition worthy of a wise man is with himself.

Washington Allston

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Washington Allston
Age: 63 †
Born: 1779
Born: November 5
Died: 1843
Died: July 9
Novelist
Painter
Poet
Writer
Charleston
South Carolina
W. Allston
Washington Alston
Allston
Adventure
Wise
Men
Worthy
Competition

More quotes by Washington Allston

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Make no man your idol, for the best man must have faults and his faults will insensibly become yours, in addition to your own.
Washington Allston
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The painter who is content with the praise of the world for what does not satisfy himself, is not an artist, but an artisan for though his reward be only praise, his pay is that of a mechanic.
Washington Allston
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Reputation is but a synonym of popularity: dependent on suffrage, to be increased or diminished at the will of the voters.
Washington Allston
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Nothing gets you behind faster than trying to keep up with people who are already there.
Washington Allston
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Nothing is rarer than a solitary lie for lies breed like Surinam toads you cannot tell one but out it comes with a hundred young ones on its back.
Washington Allston
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He who has no pleasure in looking up, is not fit so much as to look down.
Washington Allston
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Humility is also a healing virtue it will cicatrize a thousand wounds, which pride would keep forever open.
Washington Allston
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Selfishness in art, as in other things, is sensibility kept at home.
Washington Allston
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All effort at originality must end either in the quaint or the monstrous. For no man knows himself as an original he can only believe it on the report of others.
Washington Allston
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Fame has no necessary conjunction with praise it may exist without the breath of a word: it is a recognition of excellence which must be felt, but need not be spoken. Even the envious must feel it: feel it, and hate in silence.
Washington Allston
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If I prove extravagant, I shall be more so from ignorance than willfulness. I am not wholly insensible to the pleasures of the world, therefore shall not be governed entirely by necessity but I flatter myself, at least, in being able to restrain their gratification within due bonds.
Washington Allston
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The greatest of all fools is the proud fool--who is at the mercy of every fool he meets.
Washington Allston
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Reverence is an ennobling sentiment it is felt to be degrading only by the vulgar mind, which would escape the sense of its own littleness by elevating itself into an antagonist of what is above it. He that has no pleasure in looking up is not fit so much as to look down. Of such minds are mannerists in Art in the world, tyrants of all sorts.
Washington Allston
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Desert being the essential condition of praise, there can be no reality in the one without the other.
Washington Allston
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The most common disguise of Envy is in praise of what is subordinate.
Washington Allston
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Never expect justice from a vain man if he has the negative magnanimity not to disparage you, it is the most you can expect.
Washington Allston
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If an Artist love his Art for its own sake, he will delight in excellence wherever he meets it, as well in the work of another as in his own.
Washington Allston
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In the same degree that we overrate ourselves, we shall underrate others.
Washington Allston
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The Painter who seeks popularity in Art closes the door upon his own genius.
Washington Allston
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If the whole world should agree to speak nothing but truth, what an abridgment it would make of speech! And what an unravelling there would be of the invisible webs which men, like so many spiders, now weave about each other!
Washington Allston