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

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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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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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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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Desert being the essential condition of praise, there can be no reality in the one without the other.
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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 Painter who seeks popularity in Art closes the door upon his own genius.
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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 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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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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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 greatest of all fools is the proud fool--who is at the mercy of every fool he meets.
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Nothing gets you behind faster than trying to keep up with people who are already there.
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In the same degree that we overrate ourselves, we shall underrate others.
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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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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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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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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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He who has no pleasure in looking up, is not fit so much as to look down.
Washington Allston