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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
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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
Men
Speech
Like
Speak
World
Truth
Unravelling
Nothing
Webs
Whole
Weave
Many
Spiders
Make
Invisible
Would
Agree
More quotes by Washington Allston
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
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
The most intangible, and therefore the worst, kind of a lie is a half truth. This is the peculiar device of a conscientious detractor.
Washington Allston
Reputation is but a synonym of popularity: dependent on suffrage, to be increased or diminished at the will of the voters.
Washington Allston
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
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
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
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.
Washington Allston
Desert being the essential condition of praise, there can be no reality in the one without the other.
Washington Allston
He who has no pleasure in looking up, is not fit so much as to look down.
Washington Allston
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
Never judge a work of art by its defects.
Washington Allston
No man knows himself as an original.
Washington Allston
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
Nothing gets you behind faster than trying to keep up with people who are already there.
Washington Allston
I cannot believe that any man who deserved fame ever labored for it that is, directly. For, as fame is but the contingent of excellence, it would be like an attempt to project a shadow, before its substance was obtained.
Washington Allston
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
Humility is also a healing virtue it will cicatrize a thousand wounds, which pride would keep forever open.
Washington Allston
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
The Painter who seeks popularity in Art closes the door upon his own genius.
Washington Allston
