No man who can do any one thing well will be able to any different thi — John Constable

"There is nothing ugly; I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, — light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful."

"He was acquainted with Archdeacon Fisher, and painted for him Salisbury Cathedral, and several views in that neighbourhood. I have stood on the exact spot from which he took the cathedral, which is very like, though not sufficiently confined for his style of painting. Old Sarum, too, is among his most interesting productions."

"Where is my great-coat? I am going to see Mr. Constables pictures. [because of the feeling of frost he got from Constables paintings]"

"Constable himself knew the value of such studies, for he rarely parted with them. He used to say of his studies and pictures that he had no objection to part with the corn, but not with the field that grew it."

"I knew Constables paintings long before I knew Constable, and formed a very wrong estimate of his character. His paintings give one the idea of a positive, conceited person, whereas anyone more diffident of his own powers could not be. Once, not long before his death, when I was with him on Heston steeple, he scratched on the leads those well-known lines of John Milton where he describes Fame as the last infirmity of noble minds, and introduces the Fury with her abhorred shears. Constable could not have described his own character better."

"It is much to my advantage that several of my pictures should be seen together, as it displays to advantage their varieties of conception and also of execution, and what they gain by the mellowing hand of time which should never be forced or anticipated. Thus my pictures when first coming forth have a comparative harshness which at the time acts to my disadvantage."