Benjamin Haydon famous quotes

03-24-2025

Art is a reality, not a definition; inasmuch as it approaches a reality, it approaches perfection, and inasmuch as it approaches a mere definition, it is imperfect and untrue.
-- Benjamin Haydon

#Art #Reality #Perfection
When a man is no longer anxious to do better than well, he is done for.
-- Benjamin Haydon

#Men #Quality #Done
The great difficulty is first to win a reputation; the next to keep it while you live; and the next to preserve it after you die, when affection and interest are over, and nothing but sterling excellence can preserve your name. Never suffer youth to be an excuse for inadequacy, nor age and fame to be an excuse for indolence.
-- Benjamin Haydon

#Character #Winning #Names
There surely is in human nature an inherent propensity to extract all the good out of all the evil.
-- Benjamin Haydon

#Evil #Human Nature #Propensity
Never suffer youth to be an excuse for inadequacy, nor age and fame to be an excuse for indolence.
-- Benjamin Haydon

#Suffering #Age #Youth
The explanation of the propensity of the English people to portrait painting is to be found in their relish for a Fact. Let a man do the grandest things, fight the greatest battles, or be distinguished by the most brilliant personal heroism, yet the English people would prefer his portrait to a painting of the great deed. The likeness they can judge of; his existence is a Fact. But the truth of the picture of his deeds they cannot judge of, for they have no imagination.
-- Benjamin Haydon

#Fighting #Men #People
The longer a man lives in this world the more he must be convinced that all domestic quarrels had better never be obtruded on the public; for, let the husband be right, or let him be wrong, there is always a sympathy existing for women which is certain to give the man the worst of it.
-- Benjamin Haydon

#Husband #Men #Giving
It is highly convenient to believe in the infinite mercy of God when you feel the need of mercy, but remember also his infinite justice.
-- Benjamin Haydon

#Believe #Justice #Needs
Fortunately for serious minds, a bias recognized is a bias sterilized.
-- Benjamin Haydon

#Mind #Prejudice #Serious
This is an age of intellectual sauces, of essence, of distillation. We have conclusions without deductions, abridgments of history and abridgments of science without leading facts. We have animals for literature, Cabinet Encyclopaedias, Family Libraries, Diffusion Societies, and heaven knows what else! What is all this for? Not to add knowledge to the learned, but to tell points to the ignorant, without giving them the trouble to acquire the links. Oh! it is sad work. And the result will be injurious to all classes.
-- Benjamin Haydon

#Animal #Essence #Class
The only legitimate artists in England are the architects.
-- Benjamin Haydon

#Artist #England #Architecture
The safest principle through life, instead of reforming others, is to set about perfecting yourself.
-- Benjamin Haydon

#Self Improvement #Principles #Improvement
Temperance in everything is requisite for happiness.
-- Benjamin Haydon

#Temperance
One of the surest evidences of an elevated taste is the power of enjoying works of impassioned terrorism, in poetry, and painting. The man who can look at impassioned subjects of terror with a feeling of exultation may be certain he has an elevated taste.
-- Benjamin Haydon

#Men #Feelings #Looks
To procrastinate seems inherent in man, for if you do to-day that you may enjoy to-morrow it is but deferring the enjoyment; so that to be idle or industrious, vicious or virtuous, is but with a view of procrastinating the one or the other.
-- Benjamin Haydon

#Procrastination #Men #Views
Genius is nothing more than common faculties refined to a greater intensity. There are no astonishing ways of doing astonishing things. All astonishing things are done by ordinary materials.
-- Benjamin Haydon

#Ordinary #Genius #Done

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