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

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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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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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The most common disguise of Envy is in praise of what is subordinate.
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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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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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Never judge a work of art by its defects.
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In the same degree that we overrate ourselves, we shall underrate others.
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I have no ambition to shine beyond my abilities.
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Distinction is the consequence, never the object of a great mind.
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The love of gain never made a painter but it has marred many.
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Humility is also a healing virtue it will cicatrize a thousand wounds, which pride would keep forever open.
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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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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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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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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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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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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.
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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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