Joshua Reynolds Quotes

Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, but genius must be born; and never can be taught.

I've always been creating, no one had to teach me how to create, I always made things.

There is nothing so remote from vanity as true genius. It is almost as natural for those who are endowed with the highest powers of the human mind to produce the miracles of art, as for other men to breathe or move. Correggio, who is said to have produced some of his divinest works almost without having seen a picture, probably did not know that he had done anything extraordinary.

Genius is neither learned nor acquired. It is knowing without experience. It is risking without fear of failure. It is perception without touch. It is understanding without research. It is certainty without proof. It is ability without practice. It is invention without limitations. It is imagination without boundaries. It is creativity without constraints. It is...extraordinary intelligence!

No thesaurus can give you those words, no rhyming dictionary. They must happen out of you.

Of course creativity is a mystery. We don't know what drives it or what constitutes it. It's one of those things, like genius, you know it when you see it but it's impossible to define.

Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more.

We can use techniques in modifying things, in controlling things, but the first impulse has to be something that you simply cannot make just out of technique, or else it becomes perfectly evident that it is nothing but technique that you're exercising.

What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality?

There are no rules and regulations for perfect composition. If there were we would be able to put all the information into a computer and would come out with a masterpiece. We know that's impossible. You have to compose by the seat of your pants.

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it.

Genius is not perfected, it is deepened. It does not so much interpret the world as fertilize itself with it.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

Everything that I've ever made in my life is from my instinct.

I've always known from a young age that creativity is natural.

The greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances.

And what is Genius but finer love, a love impersonal, a love of the flower and perfection of things, and a desire to draw a new picture or copy of the same? It looks to the cause and life: it proceeds from within outward, whilst Talent goes from without inward.

What has been done in the world - the works of genius - cost nothing. There is no painful effort, but it is the spontaneous flowing of the thought. Shakespeare made his Hamlet as a bird weaves its nest.

Talent is the ability to say things well, but genius is the ability to, well, say things.

The difference between Talent and Genius is that Talent says things which he has never heard but once, and Genius things which he has never heard.

Genius is the ability to renew one's emotions in daily experience.

It is always possible to create something original.

Upper berth, lower berth, that's the difference between talent and genius.

Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it.