Date: 1778

"Every seminary of learning may be said to be surrounded with an atmosphere of floating knowledge, where every mind may imbibe somewhat congenial to its own original conceptions."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: 1778

"An exact imitation, therefore, of those pictures, is likely to fill the student’s mind with false opinions, and to send him back a colourist of his own formation, with ideas equally remote from nature and from art, from the genuine practice of the masters and the real appearances of things."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: 1778

"Ideas thus fixed by sensible objects, will be certain and definitive; and sinking deep into the mind, will not only be more just, but more lasting than those presented to you by precepts only: which will, always be fleeting, variable, and undetermined."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 10, 1778; 1779

"Novelty makes a more forcible impression on the mind, than can be done by representation of what we have often seen before; and contrasts rouse the power of comparison by opposition."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 10, 1778; 1779

"Where all is novelty, the attention, the exercise of the mind is too violent."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: 1780

"Not an indifferency to, or equilibrium betwixt right and wrong; for that had been to have a mixed, or no quality, a mere rasa tabula, to be impressed things extrinsical to it, without any understanding and choice of its own: Both which were foreign to the primitive state of man."

— Manners, Nicholas

Date: December 10, 1782; 1783

"Besides those minute differences in things which are frequently not observed at all, and when they are make little impression, there are in all considerable objects great characteristic distinctions, which press strongly on the senses, and therefore fix the imagination."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 10, 1782; 1783

"It may be remarked, that the impression which is left on our mind, even of things which are familiar to us, is seldom more than their general effect; beyond which we do not look in recognising such objects."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 10, 1782; 1783

"I only wish to impress on your minds the true distinction between essential and subordinate powers, and shew what qualities in the art claim your chief attention, and what may, with the least injury to your reputation, be neglected."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 10, 1784; 1785

"I would rather wish a Student, as soon as he goes abroad, to employ himself upon whatever he has been incited to, by any immediate impulse, than to go sluggishly about a prescribed task; whatever he does in such a state of mind little advantage accrues from it, as nothing sinks deep enough to le...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)