A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great.

- Joshua Reynolds

A room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts.

- Joshua Reynolds

It is but a poor eloquence which only shows that the orator can talk.

- Joshua Reynolds

All the gestures of children are graceful; the reign of distortion and unnatural attitudes commences with the introduction of the dancing master.

- Joshua Reynolds

There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.

- Joshua Reynolds

Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius.

- Joshua Reynolds

If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.

- Joshua Reynolds

Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own teachers.

- Joshua Reynolds

The greatest man is he who forms the taste of a nation; the next greatest is he who corrupts it.

- Joshua Reynolds

The real character of a man is found out by his amusements.

- Joshua Reynolds

Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory; nothing can come of nothing.

- Joshua Reynolds

The value and rank of every art is in proportion to the mental labor employed in it, or the mental pleasure in producing it.

- Joshua Reynolds

Words should be employed as the means, not the end; language is the instrument, conviction is the work.

- Joshua Reynolds