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

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The Painter who seeks popularity in Art closes the door upon his own genius.
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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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The love of gain never made a painter but it has marred many.
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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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In the same degree that we overrate ourselves, we shall underrate others.
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No man knows himself as an original.
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Distinction is the consequence, never the object of a great mind.
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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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The most intangible, and therefore the worst, kind of a lie is a half truth. This is the peculiar device of a conscientious detractor.
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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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Humility is also a healing virtue it will cicatrize a thousand wounds, which pride would keep forever open.
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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 most common disguise of Envy is in praise of what is subordinate.
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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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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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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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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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Selfishness in art, as in other things, is sensibility kept at home.
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The only competition worthy of a wise man is with himself.
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