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I have no ambition to shine beyond my abilities.

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
Abilities
Shine
Shining
Ambition
Beyond
Ability

More quotes by Washington Allston

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Never judge a work of art by its defects.
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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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
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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 greatest of all fools is the proud fool--who is at the mercy of every fool he meets.
Washington Allston
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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.
Washington Allston
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No man knows himself as an original.
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 only competition worthy of a wise man is with himself.
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
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The most common disguise of Envy is in praise of what is subordinate.
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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He who has no pleasure in looking up, is not fit so much as to look down.
Washington Allston
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Selfishness in art, as in other things, is sensibility kept at home.
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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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
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In the same degree that we overrate ourselves, we shall underrate 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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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