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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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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
Therefore
Governed
Prove
Gratification
Shall
Wholly
Willfulness
Least
Pleasures
Insensible
Pleasure
Necessity
Restrain
Within
Dues
Flatter
Able
Entirely
Extravagant
World
Ignorance
Bonds

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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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The love of gain never made a painter but it has marred many.
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The Painter who seeks popularity in Art closes the door upon his own genius.
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Never judge a work of art by its defects.
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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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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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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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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.
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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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Never expect justice from a vain man if he has the negative magnanimity not to disparage you, it is the most you can expect.
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Selfishness in art, as in other things, is sensibility kept at home.
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He who has no pleasure in looking up, is not fit so much as to look down.
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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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The only competition worthy of a wise man is with himself.
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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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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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Reputation is but a synonym of popularity: dependent on suffrage, to be increased or diminished at the will of the voters.
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No man knows himself as an original.
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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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In the same degree that we overrate ourselves, we shall underrate others.
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