“By God you are the only great man, except George Pitt, that I care a farthing for, or would wear out a pair of shoes in seeking after. Long-headed cunning people and rich fools are so plentiful in our country that I don’t fear getting now and then a face to paint for bread, but a man of genius with truth and simplicity, sense and good nature, I think worth his weight in gold - [signed:] 'Your Likeness Man”

Quote in Gainsborough's letter to Hon. Constantine Phipps, undated; as cited in 'My Dear Maggoty Sir – The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough' http://thedabbler.co.uk/2011/10/my-dear-maggoty-sir-the-letters-of-thomas-gainsborough/, review by Roger Hudson, in Slightly Foxed, 18 Oct, 2011
undated

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "By God you are the only great man, except George Pitt, that I care a farthing for, or would wear out a pair of shoes in…" by Thomas Gainsborough?
Thomas Gainsborough photo
Thomas Gainsborough 28
English portrait and landscape painter 1727–1788

Related quotes

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot photo

“.. and, to tell the truth, I find it very difficult to like new art. It is only lately, and after having been unsympathetic for a great while, that I at last understood Eugene Delacroix, whom I now think a great man.”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875) French landscape painter and printmaker in etching

as quoted by Arthur Hoebert, in The Barbizon Painters – being the story of the Men of thirty – associate of the National Academy of Design; publishers, Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York 1915, p. 61
undated

Albert Szent-Györgyi photo
Frederik Pohl photo

“I don’t think you know what it’s like to have someone head over heels in love with you. What’s the good of a man who’s upside down?”

Source: Man Plus (1976), Chapter 7, “Mortal Becoming Monster” (p. 81)

George Carlin photo
William Saroyan photo
Frank Gore photo
Ayn Rand photo
Ignatius Sancho photo

“… as you are not to be a boy all your life- and I trust would not be reckoned a fool- use your every endeavour to be a good man”

Ignatius Sancho (1729–1780) British composer, writer and grocer

(from vol 2, letter 13: 29 Nov 1778, to Mr S___ in Madras).

David Thomas (born 1813) photo

“A great man, I take it, is a man so inspired and permeated with the ideas of God and the Christly spirit as to be too magnanimous for vengeance, and too unselfish to seek his own ends.”

David Thomas (born 1813) (1813–1894) 19th-century Welsh preacher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 293.

Related topics