Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
However
Novelty
Understood
Dozen
Greedily
Half
Unusual
Congenial
True
Rarely
Averse
Form
Originals
Swallowed
Mind
Original
Whilst
Men
Fantastic
Admitting
False
Reflected

More quotes by Washington Allston

Image
Never judge a work of art by its defects.
Washington Allston
Image
The greatest of all fools is the proud fool--who is at the mercy of every fool he meets.
Washington Allston
Image
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
Image
The most common disguise of Envy is in praise of what is subordinate.
Washington Allston
Image
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
Image
I have no ambition to shine beyond my abilities.
Washington Allston
Image
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
Image
Humility is also a healing virtue it will cicatrize a thousand wounds, which pride would keep forever open.
Washington Allston
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Desert being the essential condition of praise, there can be no reality in the one without the other.
Washington Allston
Image
Selfishness in art, as in other things, is sensibility kept at home.
Washington Allston
Image
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
Image
In the same degree that we overrate ourselves, we shall underrate others.
Washington Allston
Image
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
Image
Reputation is but a synonym of popularity: dependent on suffrage, to be increased or diminished at the will of the voters.
Washington Allston
Image
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.
Washington Allston
Image
No man knows himself as an original.
Washington Allston
Image
The love of gain never made a painter but it has marred many.
Washington Allston
Image
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.
Washington Allston