The Greatest Man Is He

Excellence Is Never Granted To Man But As The Reward Of Labor. It Argues No Small Strength Of Mind To Persevere In Habits Of Industry Without The Pleasure Of Perceiving Those Advances, Which, Like The Hand Of A Clock, Whilst They Make Hourly Approaches To Their Point, Yet Proceed So Slowly As To Escape Observation.

Gardening As Far As Gardening Is Art, Or Entitled To That Appellation, Is A Deviation From Nature; For If The True Taste Consists, As Many Hold, In Banishing Every Appearance Of Art, Or Any Traces Of The Footsteps Of Man, It Would Then Be No Longer A Garden.

He Who Resolves Never To Ransack Any Mind But His Own, Will Be Soon Reduced, From Mere Barrenness, To The Poorest Of All Imitations; He Will Be Obliged To Imitate Himself, And To Repeat What He Has Before Often Repeated.

An Eye Critically Nice Can Only Be Formed By Observing Well-colored Pictures With Attention.

But Young Men Have Not Only This Frivolous Ambition Of Being Thought Masters Of Execution, Inciting Them On The One Hand, But Also Their Natural Sloth Tempting Them On The Other. They Are Terrified At The Prospect Before Them, Of The Toil Required To Attain Exactness. The Impetuosity Of Youth Is Disgusted At The Slow Approaches Of A Regular Siege, And Desires, From Mere Impatience Of Labour, To Take The Citadel By Storm. They Wish To Find Some Shorter Path To Excellence, And Hope To Obtain The Reward Of Eminence By Other Means, Than Those Which The Indispensable Rules Of Art Have Prescribed.