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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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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
Effort
Quaint
Others
Monstrous
Ends
Report
Must
Originality
Believe
Reports
Men
Originals
Original
Either

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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.
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Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul Veronese absolutely enchanted me, for they took away all sense of subject... It was the poetry of color which I felt, procreative in its nature, giving birth to a thousand things which the eye cannot see, and distinct from their cause.
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The Painter who seeks popularity in Art closes the door upon his own genius.
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I have no ambition to shine beyond my abilities.
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Selfishness in art, as in other things, is sensibility kept at home.
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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!
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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.
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An original mind is rarely understood, until it has been reflected from some half-dozen congenial with it, so averse are men to admitting the true in an unusual form whilst any novelty, however fantastic, however false, is greedily swallowed.
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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.
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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.
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The most intangible, and therefore the worst, kind of a lie is a half truth. This is the peculiar device of a conscientious detractor.
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Desert being the essential condition of praise, there can be no reality in the one without the other.
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The most common disguise of Envy is in praise of what is subordinate.
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The greatest of all fools is the proud fool--who is at the mercy of every fool he meets.
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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.
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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.
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The only competition worthy of a wise man is with himself.
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I am inclined to think from my own experience that the difficulty to eminence lies not in the road, but in the timidity of the traveler.
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Injustice allowed at home is not likely to be corrected abroad.
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Distinction is the consequence, never the object of a great mind.
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